Can't receive files over bluetooth unless settings dialog is open

[David]

On 18.04 I could send files from my phone to my laptop at any time.
On 20.04 I can't get files to be accepted by the laptop over bluetooth. After much frustration and experimenting, I figured out that it will work, but only if the bluetooth settings dialog is open. If the settings dialog is not open, the incoming file is rejected. If the dialog is closed after the file transfer begins, the transfer continues but the file is discarded when the transfer is complete. This is very frustrating.
I need to be able to send files (mostly photos and videos) from my phone to my laptop without having to open the settings dialog on the laptop, just like I could before upgrading.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

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[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

I'm not sure if this is a bug or a security feature. You might be able to keep it enabled in the 'bluetoothctl' tool. Or try something like 'bt-obex -s'.

[David (david-depowell)]

I tried "bluetoothctl". That's a neat tool that I didn't know about, but I couldn't find a command that would let me send stuff from my phone without interaction. I installed bt-obex and tried "bt-obex -s", which allowed file transfer but I still had to acknowledge each one.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

In that case you probably want:

  bt-obex -s -y

But still it's just a workaround for the original problem.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The issue is a gnome-control-center design decision one and has been reported upstream

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control-center/-/issues/1189