Soundcore Buds for Noctalia

Soundcore battery, listening mode and ANC strength in the Noctalia bar, powered by OpenSCQ30. Tested against Soundcore R60i NC (D1202C); other OpenSCQ30 models work via capability detection.

Ported from the architecture of the AirPods community plugin (harveywuk/airpods, MIT, itself a port of thisisgm/omarchy-pods), with device logic adapted from omarchy-better-omapods (bridge.py / Model.js).

Screenshots

Plugin

Field	Value
ID	sankity/soundcore-buds
Entries	Bar widget: soundcore; panel: panel; service: service

Requirements

• OpenSCQ30 installed with openscq30 on PATH (or set openscq30_path in Settings → Plugins).
• bluetoothctl (bluez), busctl (systemd) and bash on PATH (used for discovery; busctl also pauses/resumes MPRIS players during Find).
• Find helper only: pactl, plus paplay (or pw-play) and python3 to synthesize and play the locating tone.
• Earbuds paired via the usual Bluetooth flow and registered with OpenSCQ30: openscq30 paired-devices list must show your device. If not: openscq30 paired-devices add --mac-address <MAC> --model <MODEL_ID> (find <MODEL_ID> via openscq30 list-models).

Usage

Add the Soundcore Buds widget to a bar from Settings → Bar. The icon stays hidden until Soundcore buds are connected (see hide_when_disconnected).

• Left click opens the panel.
• Right click cycles the listening mode without opening anything.
• Sections are grouped cards; tapping an active listening mode collapses it. Noise Cancellation expands Adaptive / Manual / Multi-Scene sub-modes, each with its own extra controls (ANC slider, scenario). Touch controls are grouped per gesture with left/right dropdowns side by side.

The panel is also available directly:

noctalia msg panel-toggle sankity/soundcore-buds:panel

Settings

Setting	Type	Default	Description
openscq30_path	file	empty	Path to openscq30. Leave empty to find it on PATH.
poll_interval	int	4	Service poll interval in seconds (2–15). Bluetooth is slow, keep it at 3 or above.
hide_when_disconnected	bool	true	Hide the bar widget when nothing is connected (widget setting).
icon	select	Auto	Bar icon: Auto follows the device, Earbuds is the in-ear silhouette, Over-ear is the headphone cups (widget setting).

Touch

The panel shows a TOUCH section when the connected device exposes touch controls (8 on the R60i NC: single/double/triple/hold per bud). Each row is a dropdown with the actions the device actually offers, plus a touch-tone toggle and a reset-to-defaults row where supported. Changes apply immediately and snap back if openscq30 rejects them.

Sound & device settings

When the connected device exposes them, the panel also shows:

• SOUND: transparency sub-mode (under Transparency), noise scenario (under ANC), wind suppression, real-time adaptive ANC.
• DEVICE: dual connections, auto power off, low battery prompt, high volume limiter (toggle + dB slider + check interval).
• INFO: firmware versions, adaptive ANC level, serial, linked hosts.

Only settings the connected device actually supports are drawn (capability detection via list-settings), so other models get a subset automatically.

Panel keyboard shortcuts

While the panel is focused: o Normal, t Transparency, a Adaptive, n Noise Cancellation, f find (left bud, or stop a running tone), r refresh. Esc always closes the panel.

Troubleshooting: "control busy" / widget dimmed but buds connected

openscq30 talks to the buds over an exclusive BLE control channel while audio uses A2DP. If the official Soundcore app on your phone is open (even in the background), it holds that channel and the laptop gets connect timed out. The plugin then keeps showing last-known data dimmed with an "earbuds busy" hint instead of vanishing, and recovers automatically once you close the phone app. If it happens often, disable the phone app's background activity or forget the buds on the phone.

Troubleshooting: tap actions do nothing on Linux

Media tap actions (Next / Play-Pause / Volume) are sent by the buds as kernel media keys on a virtual input device (soundcore <model> (AVRCP) — e.g. soundcore R60i NC (AVRCP); check dmesg | grep -i avrcp), not through this plugin. Your compositor must translate those keys into player commands:

• Umbriel: install playerctl and bind the keys (examples ship commented in the default config):

  [keybinds]
  "XF86AudioPlay" = "spawn:playerctl play-pause"
  "XF86AudioNext" = "spawn:playerctl next"
  "XF86AudioPrev" = "spawn:playerctl previous"
  

• KDE Plasma: works out of the box via global media-key handling.
• If taps work on your phone but not the laptop, also make sure the phone's Bluetooth is off — R60i NC supports dual connections and taps may route to the other device.

Find

The panel has a FIND section with Left / Right rows. The first tap arms the side ("tap again — LOUD"), the second tap plays a locating tone on that side: MPRIS playback pauses, the sink is boosted to 200% (plus 180% on the tone stream) and the volume limiter is temporarily bypassed (limitHighVolume=false, limitDb=100), then sink volume/mute, the limiter, and playback are restored — only players that were Playing are resumed — when the tone stops (20 seconds) or you tap Stop. Switching sides keeps playback paused until the last tone ends. Closing the panel also stops a running tone. Take the buds off your ears first — the tone is loud on purpose. Requires pactl and paplay (or pw-play) plus python3 (see Requirements).

IPC

noctalia msg plugin sankity/soundcore-buds:service all cycle-noise
noctalia msg plugin sankity/soundcore-buds:service all refresh
noctalia msg plugin sankity/soundcore-buds:service all find-left
noctalia msg plugin sankity/soundcore-buds:service all find-right
noctalia msg plugin sankity/soundcore-buds:service all stop-find

Bind the mode cycle in Hyprland, for example:

# ~/.config/hypr/hyprland.conf
bind = SUPER, N, exec, noctalia msg plugin sankity/soundcore-buds:service all cycle-noise

Notes

• The service polls openscq30 every few seconds; Bluetooth is slow, so keep poll_interval at 3 or above.
• Controls are optimistic: the panel reflects a click immediately and snaps back only if openscq30 rejects it or does not confirm within a few seconds.
• The panel reads the device's capability list, so it only draws the modes and the ANC-strength slider the connected device actually supports.
• Charging buds are shown as "Charging"; buds resting unplugged in the case are shown as "In case" (tracked via twsStatus/hostDevice), otherwise connected buds are shown as "In ear".
• Touch controls are set with setting --set <id>=<value>; an empty value deselects (shows as Off).
• Coexistence: openscq30 holds an exclusive control channel — close the phone app if the panel reports busy. The Find tone only ever plays on the Bluetooth buds sink (never speakers) and restores volume/mute, the volume limiter, and paused players afterwards; if its process is force-killed (kill -9), lower the sink volume back manually.

Compatibility

Category	Battery	Listening modes	Extras
TWS earbuds (tested: R60i NC)	Per-bud + case	Modes + sub-modes + ANC slider + touch + find	Full support
Over-ear headphones (Q30-class)	Single headset row	Modes + scenario sub-modes	No touch/case rows (device has none)
Speakers	Not supported	Not supported	Out of scope

Support is capability-driven: every control has a fixed, translated UI and appears only when the connected device reports that capability, otherwise it stays hidden. Nothing appears without a designed UI. If the buds are connected over Bluetooth but unknown to openscq30, the service registers them itself (paired-devices add). Intentionally unsupported: equalizer (protects the phone-side HearID curve), spatial audio, LDAC, speaker-only settings. Only the R60i NC is tested with real hardware; other models are covered by fixtures in tests/ — please report issues with your model ID (openscq30 list-models) and the failing behavior.

Development notes

• Hot-reload applies to .luau files only. After changing plugin.toml or adding new tr() keys in translations/, disable and re-enable the plugin once, otherwise new settings read as undeclared and new strings render as raw keys.
• Run bash tests/run.sh before committing.

License

MIT. Device control is OpenSCQ30 by Oppzippy (GPL-3.0), which is not bundled with this plugin. Soundcore is a trademark of Anker Innovations, which does not sponsor this plugin.