# gnome-bluetooth Manual

## Introduction

gnome-bluetooth is an application that let you manage Bluetooth in the GNOME destkop.

- gnome-bluetooth permits to send files to your Bluetooth devices, or browse their content.

- Connect to your devices, like headset or audio gateway.

- You can add or delete Bluetooth devices, or manage their permissions.

## Bluetooth Applet

The applet is the resident application you can find in the notification applet, that let you quickly access to the features, like sending files, or managing your devices.

### Bluetooth Applet icon in notification tray

### Starting Bluetooth Applet

The gnome-bluetooth applet is started automatically when you log into your session, and you can find its icon in the notification zone. To launch manually the applet, open menu Applications Accessories Terminal and type `bluetooth-applet`.

To prevent launching of the applet in your desktop, open menu System Preferences Session and disable Bluetooth Manager.

### Turning off your Bluetooth adapter

Disabling your Bluetooth adapter will stop current and all future communications from and to your Bluetooth adapter. Disabling your Bluetooth adapter permits to save power of your laptop's battery, so it'll increase the autonomy, this is a good idea to disable your Bluetooth device when you don't use it.

Click on the icon of the applet, and choose Turn Off Bluetooth, the notification icon will become grey.

### Sending files to Bluetooth device

Choose this menu to send a file to a device; a file chooser will appear to pick up the file to send and you'll have to select the device to send the file to.

### Browsing Bluetooth device

Choose this menu to browse the device filesystem directly in your file manager.

### Last used devices

This section displays your paired devices you can connect to.

To connect to the device, click on its name, which will become bolded to inform you're connect to it.

### Adding a new device

To add a new device (which consist of pairing your adapter with your device), click on the applet icon, and choose Setup new device.... An graphical assistant will help you in the process of setting up your device.

Don't forget to set your remote device in discoverable mode before starting the process, else the wizard won't be able to find it.

The wizard will present the discoverable devices it has found all around. You can filter out the list of devices by choosing the type of devices you're looking for.

#### Device search in wizard

If your device has a harcoded passkey, choose Passkey Options..., in the new dialog, choose the passkey to use.

Choose Forward for the pairing step; if you defined a fixed passkey in the previous step the pairing will occur automatically, else you'll be presented a passkey to enter in your device, type it on your device, once done the devices and your adapter will be paired.

### Preferences

Click on the icon of the applet, and choose Preferences , the preferences dialog will appear.

For more information about preferences, see section gnome-bluetooth-preferences

## Preferences

The gnome-bluetooth preference dialog allows you to manage your various Bluetooth devices or change properties of your Bluetooth adapter(s).

### Preferences dialog

### Discoverable

When your adapter is set to Discoverable any Bluetooth device around will be able to see it, and therefore will able to ask pairing.

Bluetooth as other network types implies security risks, so setting your adapter undiscoverable to other devices is a good thing to do to limit the possibility of cracking.

This is only useful to set your device discoverable if you plan to pair it with another device, once it is done, you can untick Discoverable.

When your device is undiscoverable, communication with already paired Bluetooth devices is possible.

### Adapter friendly name

The friendly name is an alias for the address used to identified each Bluetooth device much easier to remind.

By default the adapter friendly name is `HOSTNAME`-0 (where `HOSTNAME` is the name of your computer), to change it, edit the text entry and set the name you want. the change will be immediatly effective.

### Known Devices

Known devices lists the Bluetooth devices you paired and let you manage them, like deleting them, connect to them or adding new one.

- Setup new device, as described in gnome-bluetooth-applet-setup

- Connect / Disconnect to a device.

- Device Deletion. Deletion will suppress pairing between the adapter and the device, and no communication will be allowed. You need to pair them together again if you want transfer files for instance.

### Show Bluetooth icon

You can show or hide Bluetooth icon in the panel. See gnome-bluetooth-applet for the applet features.

If you disable the icon in the panel, only limited set of actions will remain available.

### Receive Files

Click on the Receive Files button and the Personal File Sharing Preferences dialog will appear. You can configure Bluetooth file reception and sharing there.

This feature is not provided by gnome-bluetooth. gnome-user-share must be installed to use this feature.

Read more in the Personal File Sharing Manual: receiving and sharing.

## Frequently Asked Questions

I don't see how to receive files over Bluetooth on my computer in gnome-bluetooth, am I blind?

File reception is not implemented in gnome-bluetooth, but in gnome-user-share, so you have to install this application to be able to receive files over Bluetooth. Button explained in the gnome-bluetooth-prefs-receive is just a launcher of its configuration dialog.

I found a bug in gnome-bluetooth what I can do?

You should submit a bug report to .