Force Stadia Controller to connect in Linux

Auto Reconnect Stadia controllers.md

Using Google Stadia controllers with bluetooth is notoriously a pain. Some just won't reconnect after they've been paired initially. This script is an attempt to solve that issue in Linux. You can create a .desktop file and have it autostart when you boot your computer.

Every 60 seconds it will look at the list of the controllers that you have paired previously and compare that with the list of controllers that are currently connected. It will take the diff of that and attempt to connect to each one.

#!/bin/bash

# Function to get currently connected Stadia controllers
get_connected_controllers() {
    local devices="$1"
    while read -r mac; do
        if bluetoothctl info "$mac" | grep -q "Connected: yes"; then
            echo "$mac"
        fi
    done <<< "$devices"
}

while true; do
    # Get the list of all the previously connected Stadia controllers
    all_stadia_controllers=$(bluetoothctl devices | grep Stadia | awk '{print $2}')

    if [ -z "$all_stadia_controllers" ]; then
        echo "No Stadia controllers found."
        continue
    fi

    # Get the list of currently connected Stadia controllers
    connected_controllers=$(get_connected_controllers "$all_stadia_controllers")

    # Filter out connected controllers
    unconnected_stadia_controllers=$(comm -23 <(echo "$all_stadia_controllers" | sort) <(echo "$connected_controllers" | sort))

    # Check if any Stadia controllers were found
    if [ -z "$unconnected_stadia_controllers" ]; then
        echo "No unconnected Stadia controllers found."
        continue
    fi

    # Attempt to connect to each unconnected Stadia controller
    echo "Found the following unconnected Stadia controllers:"
    echo "$unconnected_stadia_controllers"

    while IFS= read -r mac; do
        timeout 5 bluetoothctl connect "$mac" > /dev/null 2>&1 || true
    done <<< "$unconnected_stadia_controllers"

    # Wait for 1 minute before running the loop again
    sleep 60
done

Thanks! Worked great.

For those that renamed their controller (because you have 4x Stadia controllers connected to your living room's gaming PC, so you name each one), you can modify this line:

# Get the list of all the previously connected Stadia controllers
all_stadia_controllers=$(bluetoothctl devices | grep Stadia | awk '{print $2}')

To say this:

# Get the list of all the previously connected Stadia controllers
all_stadia_controllers=$(bluetoothctl devices | grep -E 'Stadia|CustomName1|Name2|Name3' | awk '{print $2}')

EDIT: In hindsight, searching for Stadia's Mac address prefix is most likely a better option than the names. :)