Pair Bluetooth devices via the command line on Linux

On Linux, it is possible to do almost everything from the command line, and connecting to Bluetooth devices is no exception. As an i3wm user, using anything other than the command line to pair my Bluetooth devices would mean pulling in a ton of extra dependencies — and I don't want them.

Install the Bluetooth dependencies

If you use any distribution other than Arch, the package names may differ. Refer to your distro's documentation if you encounter any errors.

$ sudo pacman -S bluez bluez-utils

Start the Bluetooth daemon

$ sudo systemctl start bluetooth

Enable the Bluetooth daemon at boot

If you want Bluetooth to start automatically on boot, just enable the daemon.

$ sudo systemctl enable bluetooth

Pair and connect a Bluetooth device

$ bluetoothctl

[bluetooth]# default-agent
[bluetooth]# power on
[bluetooth]# scan on
[bluetooth]# pair DEVICE-MAC-ADDRESS
[bluetooth]# trust DEVICE-MAC-ADDRESS
[bluetooth]# connect DEVICE-MAC-ADDRESS
[bluetooth]# scan off

TIP: You can use TAB to autocomplete the commands and the MAC addresses.