No sound or ability to enable bluetooth - Macbook Pro 2017

coscooper

Macbook Pro 2017 (14,1) - sound and bluetooth issues.

Let me start by saying, I’ve tried all the major distros ad all have same sound issues - BUT, BL is by far the coolest, cleanest and super modern distro out there! I run Ubuntu on PC/Intel systems and have this older MBP that I want to only use Linux. I want to stay with BL, but no sound and bluetooth is an issue.

Behavior - shows 3 sound devices - when I play Spotify or any audio, it appears to be playing, but nothing comes out of speakers. I have not tried my headphone jack as frankly, I don’t have any old wired headphones. 8-)

Also - bluetooth will not enable.

Hardware Info for Audio:
Device-1: Intel Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio
Driver: snd_hda_intel
V: kernel
Bus-ID: 00:1f.3

Device-2: Broadcom 720p FaceTime HD Camera
Driver: N/A
Bus-ID: 03:00.0

API: ALSA
V: k6.6.19-1-MANJARO
Status: kernel-api

Server-1: PipeWire
V: 1.0.3
Status: n/a (root, process)

Kernel Info:
6.6.20_rt25-1 - says in use
5.4.270-1 - Installed and is the only one installed. Without it, wifi doesn’t work - not sure how kernel works when two are installed. Guidance here would be nice, but mostly want sound to work.

Looking for drives and/or direction on Macbooks.

jimiscorpio

Just been through this myself.

For sound I had success with this. The internal microphone is apparently unable to be used on this model in linux, although I’d love to find a fix.
https://github.com/LukeShortCloud/snd_hda_macbookpro/tree/arch_linux

for bluetooth, follow the instructions for Arch Linux:
https://github.com/leifliddy/macbook12-bluetooth-driver

I also had to do this for the webcam, again follow for Arch:
https://github.com/patjak/facetimehd/wiki/Installation#additional-notes

Hope that helps.!

I have the system working well enough although suspend doesn’t work which I would really like to be able to use. The internal mic is an issue as well, but with the bluetooth working there’s a workaround