This is a guide written on how to share the same Bluetooth device(s) across Windows and Linux without having to uniquely pair each.

Steps

  1. Pair your Bluetooth device(s) with Linux first

  2. Reboot into Windows, then re-pair the devices with Windows

  3. Run regedit as Administrator

  4. Navigate to:

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\BTHPORT\Parameters\Keys

    If you do not see any Keys under the tree then you need to open regedit as a system-account user. One way to do this is using the PsExec by downloading it from Microsoft Sysinternals. Once it is downloaded, you will need to run a command-prompt as Administrator and navigate to the location PsExec is unzipped and run PsExec.exe -s -i regedit. The Bluetooth keys should now be visible.

  5. Right-click on Keys in the left-hand pane and select Export. During the dialog change Save as type to Text files and that the Export range is set to Selected branch. Store this somewhere accessible by both Windows and Linux – if a shared drive is unavailable, use a USB drive or cloud-storage.

  6. Reboot to Linux

  7. In a root (e.g. sudo su) terminal navigate to /var/lib/bluetooth then to the MAC address of your host-system (there should only be a single sub-directory under /var/lib/bluetooth)

  8. Find the relevant Bluetooth device(s) by MAC address to share and enter the equally named MAC address directory of the client device.

  9. Open the info file, with root privileges, in the text editor of your choice.

  10. In another tab/window, using either a text viewer or editor, open the previously exported Windows registry text file for the device

  11. From the Windows file, copy the Bluetooth Key. Example:

    00000000   31 c0 08 fa 4f 7b d2 4c - 6f e1 7d ba 32 29 a9 a7  1À.ïO{ÒLoá}ºQ)©§

    From the above copy 31 c0 .... a9 a7

  12. Paste the key from the previous step into the Key= portion of the Linux Bluetooth info file. Make sure to remove all spaces, hyphens, and change all characters to upper-case (all-caps).

  13. Save the info file with the changes to complete device sharing. Repeat for any other Bluetooth devices to share.