Bluetoothctl: No default controller available

Question

When I run bluetoothctl I get an error,

$ bluetoothctl scan on
No default controller available

But the kernel shows the device is loaded,

bluetooth hci0: firmware: direct-loading firmware intel/ibt-19-0-1.sfi

Answer 1

What you want to do is install rfkill and unblock bluetooth:

sudo apt install rfkill

Then

$ sudo rfkill 
ID TYPE      DEVICE                   SOFT      HARD
 0 bluetooth tpacpi_bluetooth_sw   blocked unblocked
 2 wlan      phy0                unblocked unblocked

You can see id 0 is blocked,

$ sudo rfkill unblock 0

If you're still having errors checkout this question