1y ago

Help Lemmy, Air Pods Pro 2 won't connect to my Steam Deck and I'm at an Airport about to hop on a 4 hour flight!

Not sure whats going on, I open the case with the buds in hold down the button and put it in pairing. The Steam Deck sees it but won’t pair with it. Idk what’s going on. I have reset it, disconnected it from the iPhone, idk what else to try. Desktop mode and Game mode won’t pair :-/

51 comments

Restart the Steam deck. Disable bluetooth on your iPhone just in case it is connecting to the headset while you are trying to pair. Then try to pair it again.
- Every time I end up with a finicky bluetooth pairing process, I turn off bluetooth on all devices other than the one I'm trying to pair to. Usually fixes any problem.
  
  I wish most BT devices supported being booted from a connection to connect to another so long as its a recognized device.
  Playing "guess which device is connected to what" when you just want to quickly use a BT device is a pain in the ass

I had the same issue with mine, also in an airport. I ended up renaming them from my iPhone and was then able to pair them.
Edit to add: I thought pairing them from desktop mode may give me better luck, but it actually made things worse for some reason. Even after renaming them, I wasn’t able to pair them in desktop mode. Immediately after switching back to gaming mode, I was able to pair them.

Download trombone champ and blast at full volume. You won't need headphones and everyone will love you.

Is it possible they are connecting to your phone and interfering?

Delete the buds and fully "re-pair" it. That fixes 99% of all BT issues I've ever had.

AirPods Pro gen 2 are problematic with Steam deck: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1675200/discussions/1/3370405530896320680/?tscn=1689301955
Dozens of people reports issues, most commenters are able to pair but experience various stability issues on top of the headphones not connecting automatically.
With no visible response from Valve, the hope is that kernel and relevant Bluetooth and pipewire packages upgraded in the upcoming SteamOS 3.6 contain some fixes.
AirPods Pro gen 1 are not affected.

I've never used a steam deck, but I know SteamOS runs linux. If you have the terminal easily available, try:
sudo systemctl restart bluetooth.service (might be bluetoothd.service)
If that doesn't work, this almost always resolves my bluetooth issues:
rmmod btusb
rmmod btintel
modprobe btusb
modprobe btintel
If none of that works, your bluetooth card could be disabled due to static discharge, in which case you should hold power button / hard shut down, unplug charger, boot again, plug in charger again.
These are only issues ive encountered on the Linux end. I would recommend troubleshooting the airpods by tapping the "i" button next to them and forgetting them, then attempting to pair with the Steam Deck

Forget the device and pair again. If you paired your airpods with too many devices it won't connect using the old pairing and AirPods simply forgot the Deck. Not sure if it's possible to do fron deck ui, but you can do that easily in desktop

I have a similar issue with a pair of bone conduction headphones I have. Often (maybe every couple of days) I have to go to desktop mode, go into the Bluetooth manager, tell it to completely forget the headphones, and then repair them. That consistently works with mine, but I have no idea if it'll help with air pods.

Try resetting them by holding down the button until it starts flashing orange.

When I have a Bluetooth controller that won't connect, deleting the pairing and the repairing it works. Maybe that would work here?

Don't they give you headphones on request on planes now?
- But they’re usually shit and lack noise cancellation which is really nice to have on a flight.

Is that a little Steam Deck cloth? I think I need that for mine
- One came with mine, I ordered the most expensive one, idk it's it's exclusive to that model or a new addition that comes with them all
  
  My 512 version came with one as well
- I assume it only comes with the 512 cause I got mine with the microfiber as well.

This is what worked for me. Put your deck on desktop mode and from there go to the Bluetooth icon in the taskbar and connect them from there. If you can’t see your AirPods restart the deck on desktop mode. Once connected obviously switch back to regular mode. This worked for me, I had tried all the tricks I saw

Disable the Find My function on the AirPods

It won't help you on this trip, but for anyone else reading this, you can get decent wired earbuds for $30. They're a good thing to carry with you (along with a USB c to 3.5mm dongle) for situations like this.
- That wouldn’t work very well on a plane without some sort of active noise cancellation
  
  That's not true at all. You can get fantastic passive isolation from good sealing earbuds.
- Or $50 for really crappy ones, if you're already at the airport. Lol.

On some Linux distros you need to edit /etc/bluetooth/main controller mode and change it to bredr to pair, then restart bluetooth, then change it back to dual and restart it again and it should work.

https://superuser.com/a/1533067
Maybe that could help?

Hope next time I’m on a plane my Bose 700s work

i have never used lemmy. can i help?
- You're comment appeared on Lemmy just now
- "Hello, this is dog." big time energy.
  I haven't used yet Lemmy either.
  
  Are you a good boy/girl? Want a snack?

You'll survive a 4 hour flight without headphones.
- What flight doesn't like a couple rounds of 99 bottle of beer?
- Obviously, but practically anyone would agree thats shitty.

Go to one of the many stores in the airport and buy better headphones
- Instead of being judgmental, being helpful may be what’s called for here.
  
  Air pods are known to have connection issues with non apple devices. The solution to that problem is to just get headphones that are made with other devices in mind.
- Come on, don’t be a dick.
- Buying shit at the airport is outrageous in terms of pricing.
  
  Yeah, but as long as they don't buy more apple hardware it will seem regular priced to them.
  
  They already bought airpods, I don't think price vs quality is a part of their thought process.

51 comments