Sony Headphones

Battery monitor and noise control (ANC / Ambient Sound) for Sony Bluetooth headphones in Noctalia v5+, speaking Sony's reverse-engineered MDR V2 binary protocol over Bluetooth RFCOMM — the same protocol the official Sound Connect app uses. No phone, no account, no cloud.

Plugin

Field	Value
ID	estvoid/sony_headphones
Entries	Bar widget: sony_headphones; panel: panel; service: service
Launcher Prefix	—

Requirements

• python3 on PATH (standard library only)
• bluetoothctl on PATH (BlueZ) to find and query the connected headphones
• sdptool on PATH (BlueZ) to resolve the RFCOMM channel; falls back to channel 9 when unavailable
• Paired and connected Sony headphones

Usage

Add the sony_headphones bar widget via Settings → Bar → Widgets.

• Left-click the bar icon to toggle the control panel.
• Right-click the bar icon to cycle noise modes (Noise Cancelling → Ambient Sound → Off).

The panel shows the device photo (a header button cycles the available artwork variants), a live battery gauge, and the three noise-mode buttons.

Toggle the panel from IPC / keybind:

noctalia msg panel-toggle estvoid/sony_headphones:panel

Settings

Setting	Type	Default	Description
device_mac	string	""	Bluetooth MAC of the headphones. Blank = auto-detect the connected device.
hide_when_disconnected	bool	true	Hide the bar widget while the headphones are disconnected.

IPC

noctalia msg plugin estvoid/sony_headphones:service all cycle-noise
noctalia msg plugin estvoid/sony_headphones:service all set-noise anc
noctalia msg plugin estvoid/sony_headphones:service all set-noise transparency
noctalia msg plugin estvoid/sony_headphones:service all set-noise off
noctalia msg plugin estvoid/sony_headphones:service all set-ambient 12
noctalia msg plugin estvoid/sony_headphones:service all refresh

The backend works standalone too:

python3 scripts/sony_ctl.py status [--mac XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX]
python3 scripts/sony_ctl.py set-anc anc|transparency|off
python3 scripts/sony_ctl.py set-ambient 0..20
python3 scripts/sony_ctl.py cycle-anc
python3 scripts/sony_ctl.py cached

Notes

• Talks to the Sony Serial HPC RFCOMM service (956c7b26-…, usually channel 9), resolved with sdptool.
• Spawns python3 scripts/sony_ctl.py, which runs bluetoothctl/sdptool, and writes a small cache to $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/sony_headphones_state.json. No network access.
• Over-ear models report a single battery level; BlueZ Battery Percentage is the fallback when RFCOMM is busy.
• The device does not echo the ambient level back, so the panel shows the last-set level (persisted in the cache).
• device_mac and IPC payloads are shell-quoted before use.

Model support

Battery works for every model universally through BlueZ; the deep noise-control bytes differ per generation.

Model	Battery	Noise modes	Notes
WH-1000XM5	✅ V2 + BlueZ fallback	✅ verified (0x17 subtype)	reference device
WH-1000XM6	✅	⚠️ untested (0x19 fallback)	please report
WH-1000XX (1000X The Collexion)	✅ BlueZ	⚠️ untested	artwork included
WH-1000XM4 / XM3	✅ BlueZ	⚠️ likely need V1 protocol	tracked for v0.2
WF-1000XM5 / WF-1000XM4	✅ BlueZ	⚠️ untested V2 subtypes	please report
LinkBuds / WH-CH720N / ULT	✅ BlueZ	⚠️ untested	please report

Artwork in assets/ covers XM6/XM5/XM4, WF-XM5/XM6, MX4C (black/silver/lavender), the WH-1000XX "1000X The Collexion" (black/white) and CH73x (black/white). Lookup is case-insensitive and accepts alternate Bluetooth names.