Media centres • Can't figure out how to make Kodi output to a Bluetooth device (Bookworm Lite)

I have kodi21 running as user "kodi" on 64 bit bookworm lite on a Pi 4. The kodi user also runs its own pipewire and wireplumber processes (as does my personal user account).

I can connect to my Bluetooth speaker and play audio (using pw-play) using my personal account, over SSH. I can also do "wpctl status" and get useful output of the pipewire audio sinks, including my Bluetooth speaker.

I can't seem to make Kodi use that speaker though:

• I can connect to the speaker using the kodi account by doing:
  

  Code:

  sudo -u kodi bluetoothctl connect <device>

  I tried this after reading that the bluetooth stack is single-user (don't know much about that).
• I can't use wpctl with the kodi user:
  

  Code:

  $ sudo -u kodi wpctl statusCould not connect to PipeWire

• Setting the Bluetooth sink as default output works (as in no error message) using my own account, but Kodi will not start playing audio to it despite being configured to use the "default (pipewire)" device for audio output:
  

  Code:

  wpctl set-default 77

I don't know exactly how pipewire + bluetooth + multiple users interact with each other, so I imagine any number of problems. I'm also not that good with audio/pipewire specific concepts, like the defining characteristics of "clients", "devices", "sinks", "sources", "... endpoints", "streams". All I know is that my bluetooth speakers appear as sinks.

How would I ensure that Kodi, running as user "kodi", can output audio to a connected Bluetooth speaker?

• Using Pipewire 1.2.7

Statistics: Posted by Levajn — Mon Nov 10, 2025 12:10 am — Replies 0 — Views 35

---