Bluetooth Passthrough

This is a work in progress

Since 5.0-910, Dolphin has the ability to passthrough a Bluetooth adapter for emulated Wii software. This gives emulated Wii software full control of a Bluetooth adapter, which, provided a decent, working adapter, notably allows pairing Wiimotes to Dolphin, third-party Wiimote support, working Wiimote audio and more accurate connectivity.

Setting up

Linux

A udev rule has to be installed so Dolphin can use a Bluetooth adapter without having to get root privileges.

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="YOURVID", ATTRS{idProduct}=="YOURPID", TAG+="uaccess"

Also, the USB Bluetooth kernel module should be unloaded, or Dolphin will not be able to use the adapter.

modprobe -r btusb

Note: it is also possible to unbind only a specific adapter from the btusb module, but for simplicity, unloading the whole module works too. Additionally, unloading can be automated by tweaking the udev rule.

Windows

Download and open Zadig, then:

1. In the "Options" menu in Zadig, make sure "List All Devices" is enabled.

2. Select your Bluetooth adapter in the device list.

3. On the right column, select "WinUSB" then click "Replace Driver". Select "Yes" to modify the system driver.

Dolphin will be able to use the adapter after the driver is successfully installed, and until you revert back to the default Bluetooth driver.

macOS

There is currently no way to use this feature on versions newer than 10.9, because Apple removed the ability to unload the Bluetooth kernel module.

A potential solution would be to force the OS to ignore the adapter with a codeless .kext, but this hasn't been tried yet.