Bluetooth Battery Meter

Currently supported on Gnome Versions:

Supported: 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51

Deprecated: 42

Bluetooth Battery Meter is a Gnome Extension featuring indicator icons in system tray, serving as meter for Bluetooth device battery levels and providing detailed battery levels via icon/text in the Bluetooth quick settings menu.

Important Notes

  • Certain Bluetooth devices report battery levels in different increments.
  • One would expect a continuous discharge reading like 100, 99, 98, 97… down to 0.
  • However manufacturers often design devices to report in specific increments.
  • Some devices may report battery levels in increments of 5 (e.g., 100, 95, 90, 85… to 0)
  • Some devices may report battery levels in increments of 10 (e.g., 100, 90, 80, 70… to 0)
  • Some devices may report battery levels in increments of 20 (e.g., 100, 80, 60, 40… to 0)
  • For Quick settings percentage displayed in text (when enabled), might observe battery level stuck at a percentage example 100% for a while and later suddenly drop down to 80%, if designed for increment of 20%.


Disclaimer

This project is an independent effort and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Apple, Sony, Samsung, Nothing/CMF, Bose, Redmi, Xiaomi or Sennheiser. All product and company names are trademarks™ or registered® trademarks of their respective holders and are used for identification purposes only.

Major changes in Bluetooth Battery Meter v48 — BudsLink dependency

Starting with Bluetooth Battery Meter v48, device-specific features for AirPods, Sony, Samsung Galaxy Buds, Nothing/CMF, Bose, Redmi/Xiaomi, Sennheiser, and other supported devices require the BudsLink Flatpak app, available on Flathub, as a backend.

This change was made because the device-specific code had grown considerably, and socket-level Bluetooth communication and protocol handling are not ideal to run directly inside a GNOME Shell extension.

Benefits:

  • Keeps the GNOME Shell extension lightweight and it can impact shell performance.
  • Translators can concentrate on the app and extension instead of maintaining duplicate translations across two projects.
  • Avoids duplicate documentation.
  • GNOME reviewers do not have to deal with large code changes every time a new device or feature is added.
  • Allows the author to focus on the app instead of maintaining two separate projects.
  • Building and testing the app is easier and safer for development.
  • Other distributions can also benefit from these features instead of being limited to GNOME-specific distributions.

Features:

Core Functions (Default Operation Mode)

  • Displays battery level (text/icon) reported by BlueZ in the system tray indicator and Bluetooth popup menu.

  • Configurable indicator style: battery bar or dots.

  • Customizable battery bar and dot colors.

  • Shows indicator for non-battery Bluetooth devices (e.g., keyboard, mouse) to reflect connection status.

  • Option to disable battery reporting per device.

  • Option to choose different icons for each Bluetooth device.

  • Panel Button

  • On-hover details

  • Multiple indicator mode

UPower Devices (Optional Mode)

  • When enabled, displays battery level in the system tray for non-Bluetooth UPower devices (e.g., Logitech Lightspeed keyboard/mouse).

  • Option to select a custom icon for the indicator.

  • Configurable indicator style: battery bar or dots.

  • Customizable battery bar and dot colors.

D-Bus GATT Battery Service (BAS) (Optional Mode)

  • D-Bus GATT Battery Service (BAS): for standard Bluetooth devices that expose battery information via the GATT protocol.

BudsLink Companion — Extensive Device Support

Bluetooth Battery Meter acts as a BudsLink Companion for supported Bluetooth devices, providing their battery information and device controls directly within the GNOME Shell interface.

When the extension detects a compatible device, it automatically launches BudsLink in the background and keeps it running while the device is connected. When the device is disconnected, the extension stops BudsLink after a set delay.

The BudsLink application handles the device communication, Bluetooth protocol processing, and packet decoding. Bluetooth Battery Meter communicates with BudsLink through D-Bus, receiving device information and exposing the relevant data and controls through the GNOME Shell Quick Settings interface.

Supported device families include:

  • AirPods / Beats
  • Sony
  • Samsung Galaxy Buds
  • Nothing / CMF
  • Bose
  • Redmi / Xiaomi
  • Sennheiser

Compatibility List