Enable PipeWire on Ubuntu 22.04

pipewire.md

Enable PipeWire on Ubuntu 22.04

This guide is only for original Ubuntu out-of-the-box packages. If you have added a custom PPA like pipewire-debian, you might get into conflicts.

Ubuntu 22.04 has PipeWire partially installed and enabled as it's used by browsers (WebRTC) for recoding the screeen under Wayland. We can enable remaining parts and use PipeWire for audio and Bluetooth instead of PulseAudio.

Starting from WirePlumber version 0.4.8 automatic Bluetooth profile switching (e.g. switching from A2DP to HSP/HFP when an application needs microphone access) is supported. Jammy (22.04) repos provide exactly version 0.4.8. So, we're good.

Based on Debian Wiki, but simplified for Ubuntu 22.04.

Install

Install WirePlumber as the session manager:

$ sudo apt install pipewire-media-session- wireplumber

Notice '-' at the end of 'pipewire-media-session'. This is to remove it in the same command, because 'wireplumber' will be used instead.

Start WirePlumber for your user:

$ systemctl --user --now enable wireplumber.service

Configure

ALSA

Install the ALSA plug-in:

$ sudo apt install pipewire-audio-client-libraries

And copy the config file from PipeWire docs (provided by the plug-in) into the ALSA configuration directory:

$ sudo cp /usr/share/doc/pipewire/examples/alsa.conf.d/99-pipewire-default.conf /etc/alsa/conf.d/

Check if you have other (like Pulse) configs in the /etc/alsa/conf.d/ installed by something else. You might want to remove them.

PulseAudio

Everything was done automatically by pipewire-pulse package, which should have been installed by wireplumber package as recommended. If not, install it yourself.

Bluetooth

Install the codecs and remove Bluetooth from PulseAudio, so it would be handled directly by PipeWire:

$ sudo apt install libldacbt-{abr,enc}2 libspa-0.2-bluetooth pulseaudio-module-bluetooth-

The supported codecs are SBC and LDAC.

Unfortunately, aptX and AAC are not supported because of patents and other technical reasons. aptX is available starting from 22.10 via libfreeaptx0 installed by default there (22.10 uses PipeWire by default as well). If you really need these codecs in 22.04 you may use this PPA from @aglasgall which is based on universe, but rebuilds pipewire with additional packages for aptX and AAC from multiverse. Read the discussion here.

Done

Reboot and check if it works by running:

$ LANG=C pactl info | grep '^Server Name'

working, thanks buddy

I have uploaded pipewire packages with AAC enabled for Ubuntu 24.10 "oracular" to my PPA. They should work.

It seems like the Oracular package is not provided anymore?

@elmagio Looks like Oracular EoL is July 2025, so only two and half months are left. I think it'll be better to rollback for LTS 24.04 Noble or upgrade to the newest 25.04 Plucky. Anyway you would choose the way you're opt in the next 3 months

Looks like AAC will be enabled by default in Ubuntu 25.10: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pipewire/+bug/1991936/comments/9

I will pull the source from that upload and confirm or deny this. I really hope so; doing this twice a year is not hard, but is rather tedious

@aglasgall Thanks!

The next challenge would be LE Audio and LC3 support. I have already a pair of headphones with LC3, while cheap models from Chinese brands will be available this year globally. Unfortunately, the support is not yet ready: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/-/wikis/LE-Audio-+-LC3-support

Yes, I can confirm that pipewire in questing (25.10) DOES have AAC enabled and you will NOT need this ppa on 25.10. That means that this PPA will be retired once 25.10 comes out.

I will not delete any existing packages, but I will not be adding new ones as of October. There haven't been significant SRUs to any of the past versions of pipewire in LTS releases, so this should not affect anyone.

Thanks to everyone for your patience and understanding over the last few years.

@the-spyke Ubuntu pipewire has (or will have in 25.10) LC3 enabled, but liblc3plus (for LC3+) isn't even in Ubuntu and Fraunhofer's litigious reputation honestly scares me too much to want to try packaging it myself.

LC3 being enabled means LE audio might work! I just haven't tried it, and if it doesn't it's a problem needing actual development work in pipewire and bluez, not just re-enabling a dependency :)

One last thing... The actual upload adding AAC support in 25.10 is:

pipewire (1.4.2-1ubuntu2) questing; urgency=medium

  * d/control, d/libspa-0.2-bluetooth.install,
    d/libspa-0.2-modules-extra.install, d/rules:
    - enable the aac bluetooth codec, libfdk-aac is in universe for now
      (MIR #1977614) but it's a separate .so which can be included in the
      new libspa-0.2-modules-extra binary (lp: #1991936)

 -- Sebastien Bacher <seb128@ubuntu.com>  Thu, 19 Jun 2025 17:19:35 +0200

i.e. you will have to ALSO install libspa-0.2-modules-extra for AAC support in 25.10, not just libspa-0.2-modules-bluetooth

Also, seb128 is the person who's done the real legwork here, drop him a line thanking him for it :)

@aglasgall Thanks for the confirmation! I've already made a note to myself to avoid forgetting installing libspa-0.2-modules-extra after the upgrade 😄

Last time I've been checking the LE Audio status it didn't work together with the classic stack, so I would loose my Bluetooth mouse and keyboard. There are fresh notes As of 2025-06-12 on the wiki, but I would probably wait till 25.10 release. Finally having a microphone without switching the profiles and degrading the audio would be so awesome.

@the-spyke one thing to note is that if you rely on "multipoint audio" (having more than one device paired to your headphones and active at a time), that may not work with LE yet. At least, my Sony earbuds explicitly say they won't do both at once, anyway.