Hello,
I’m trying to set up a system with two Bluetooth adapters and I would appreciate some clarification on what is officially supported and what is realistically possible.
My setup
• Internal Bluetooth adapter (built-in, USB-attached internally)
• External USB Bluetooth adapter
• Both adapters must remain enabled and functional simultaneously
My use case
I need:
• The internal adapter to always stay powered and automatically connect to two specific peripherals (keyboard + mouse).
• The external adapter to be used for everything else (headsets, controllers, etc.).
• GNOME to manage only the external adapter in the Settings UI. (Disabling bluetooth should only disable the external adapter, pairing/unpairing should manage the external adapter etc)
I do not want to disable the internal adapter at firmware level or via driver blacklisting, because I genuinely need both radios active at the same time.
I came across this issue from 2018: let user choose one bluetooth device from several in gnome control center (#263) · Issues · GNOME / Settings · GitLab
From the discussion there, it seems that:
• Multiple adapters are not supported in the UI.
• Since GNOME 42, the “highest numbered” adapter becomes the default.
• The intended workaround appears to be disabling one adapter at hardware level.
However, my situation is not about replacing one adapter with another - I need both to function simultaneously.
Current behavior
What I observe:
• GNOME seems to choose one adapter at session startup.
• If it picks the external one, everything works as I’d like.
• If it picks the internal one, I cannot manage the external adapter in the UI.
• The selection seems to be somewhat random, as between reboots I see GNOME choosing different adapters
My question
Even if full multi-adapter UI support is not planned:
Is there any supported or semi-supported way to make GNOME consistently choose a specific adapter (e.g., the external one) as the one it manages?
For example:
• Can the “default” adapter be influenced in BlueZ in a way GNOME respects?
• Is there a D-Bus or configuration-level method to hide one adapter from GNOME without disabling it system-wide?
• Is adapter ordering (hci index) the only mechanism GNOME uses?
I am not asking for full multi-adapter UI support, just a way to ensure GNOME consistently binds to one specific adapter while the other remains active but unmanaged.
I understand that multi-adapter support may not be a common case, but scenarios like separating input devices from audio devices, working around adapter connection limits or using one adapter for low-latency input and another for other things do seem like reasonable setups.
I would really appreciate clarification on whether there is a supported mechanism, a documented workaround or confirmation that this is fundamentally unsupported at the design level.
Thanks