Discovering Bluetooth devices in Python with M1 MacBook

Question

Is there any way to discover nearby Bluetooth devices using Python on macOS running on the newer Apple Silicon?

I tried Pybluez, but lightblue, one of its dependencies, doesn't seem to be supported.

Answer 1

You can use bleak, it works for me on M1 macOS Ventura

Just make sure you have the necessary permissions to access Bluetooth from your terminal app (iTerm, for example), I spent really annoying 15 minutes on this error. go to "System Preferences" > "Privacy & Security" > "Bluetooth" and enable access for your terminal application.

Install bleak using pip:

pip install bleak

Here's a short example that demonstrates how to discover nearby Bluetooth devices:

import asyncio
from bleak import BleakScanner

async def discover_devices():
    devices = await BleakScanner.discover()
    for device in devices:
        print(f"Device: {device.name}, Address: {device.address}")

asyncio.run(discover_devices())

Learn more at Bleak official documentation. Happy Bluetoothing!