Bluetooth Speakers default audio device

Hi Guys,

I am using a pair of Audioengine HD3 bluetooth speakers with my system. They are working perfectly. When I turn them on, they automatically pair with the system, and when I look at the output devices in the audio settings they are listed and can be selected.

This last part is what I am hoping to do something with… I’d like to find a way for the speakers to become the default output device when their bluetooth connection becomes active. Right now I have to manually select them each time I turn the speakers on, or reboot my system.

I’ve looked through the Pulse Audio and bluetooth man pages, but I can’t find a way to accomplish this…that is I don’t see a trigger / event that I can use to reconfigure the output using pacmd. (If I’ve understood correctly I need to pass pacmd move-source-output .)

Anyone have any ideas how this could be accomplished? Or, am I missing something? I something mis-configured that would allow me to make the HD3’s my default output and do change the output automatically without a user generated script?

For completeness sake, here’s my current system / audio configuration:

System:
Host: XXXXXX Kernel: 5.10.2-2-MANJARO x86_64 bits: 64
Desktop: Xfce 4.14.3 Distro: Manjaro Linux
Audio:
Device-1: AMD driver: snd_hda_intel
Device-2: AMD Raven/Raven2/FireFlight/Renoir Audio Processor driver: N/A
Device-3: AMD Family 17h HD Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.10.2-2-MANJARO

I used the Arch wiki to achieve a similar thing - automatically connecting my headphones whenever I switch them on.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/bluetooth_headset#Setting_up_auto_connection

I had to add a line to

/etc/pulse/default.pa

like described there
and also add/uncomment

/etc/bluetooth/main.conf

like described there

I also used the cli method to pair the device
the section right above “Setting up auto connection”
the gui wouldn’t work for this

But it seems that you have that part already covered.