Control your Google Pixel Buds from the Linux desktop: switch noise cancelling modes and check the battery of each bud and the case. Built with GTK 4 and libadwaita.
Status: early development. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Google.
- Noise control: Off, Noise Cancelling, Transparency and Adaptive (modes a model rejects are greyed out)
- Battery level and charging state for the left bud, right bud and case
- Follows changes made on the buds themselves (touch-and-hold gesture)
- Reconnects on its own when the buds come back
- Panel (tray) icon with battery and noise control, so the window can stay closed. Needs a desktop with StatusNotifierItem support: KDE, or GNOME with the AppIndicator extension (enabled by default on Ubuntu). Without it, closing the window quits the app.
- English and Spanish, selectable in Preferences (follows the system language by default)
- Light or dark style, selectable in Preferences (follows the system setting by default)
Budlink talks to the buds over Google's Maestro protocol, using
libmaestro by Maximilian Luz.
| Device | Status |
|---|---|
| Pixel Buds 2a | Tested (no Adaptive mode: the buds reject it) |
| Pixel Buds Pro | Expected to work (supported by libmaestro), not tested yet |
| Pixel Buds Pro 2 | Untested |
If you try it with another model, please open an issue with the result.
Budlink is available on GitHub, at github.com/neptunonet/budlink. There are no prebuilt packages yet (a Flathub release is in the works), so get the source and build it in one of two ways:
git clone https://github.com/neptunonet/budlink.git
cd budlink- Flatpak (recommended, works on any distribution): see Flatpak below.
- Native build with
cargo, installed in~/.local: see the next steps.
Dependencies on Debian/Ubuntu:
sudo apt install cargo libgtk-4-dev libadwaita-1-dev libdbus-1-dev pkg-config protobuf-compilerRequires Rust 1.92+, GTK 4 and libadwaita 1.7+. Then:
cargo build --release
./target/release/budlinkTo install it for your user, with its menu entry and icon (in ~/.local):
./install.sh./install.sh --uninstall removes it again.
The manifest is io.github.neptunonet.Budlink.json. It
builds on the GNOME 51 runtime with the rust-stable SDK extension. Install the tooling and the
Flathub remote first:
sudo apt install flatpak flatpak-builder
flatpak remote-add --user --if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepoThen build and install it for your user:
flatpak-builder --user --install --install-deps-from=flathub --force-clean build-dir io.github.neptunonet.Budlink.json
flatpak run io.github.neptunonet.BudlinkThe build runs offline, so the Rust crates come from
build-aux/cargo-sources.json. Regenerate it after any change to
Cargo.lock, with
flatpak-cargo-generator:
uv run flatpak-cargo-generator.py Cargo.lock -o build-aux/cargo-sources.jsonThe sandbox gets the Bluetooth socket family (--allow=bluetooth, for the RFCOMM link to the
buds), BlueZ on the system bus and the StatusNotifierWatcher on the session bus (for the panel
icon), besides the usual display access.
- Pair and connect the buds from the system Bluetooth settings.
- Open Budlink. It finds the connected buds on its own.
Set RUST_LOG=budlink=debug for verbose logs.
- One controller at a time. The buds accept a single control connection. If the Pixel Buds app (or the Pixel Buds settings) is open on a phone connected through multipoint, it takes the link away from Budlink. Budlink then shows a notice and backs off before retrying (up to one minute between attempts), so the two don't keep stealing the connection from each other. Close the phone app, or press Try Again, to reconnect right away.
- pbpctrl / libmaestro by Maximilian Luz: the reverse-engineered Maestro protocol that makes this possible.
GPL-3.0-or-later. See LICENSE.