Reduce bluetoothctl verbosity

Question

While using interactively bluetoothctl, it constantly reports about RSSI changes from neighbor devices. That's pretty anoying most of the time, as I do not care of the RSSI from my colleague's iMac while connecting my laptop to my bluetooth mouse:

$ bluetoothctl
Agent registered
[CHG] Device 2C:xx:xx:xx:xx:B6 RSSI: -79
[CHG] Device 2C:xx:xx:xx:xx:B6 RSSI: -79
[CHG] Device 2C:xx:xx:xx:xx:B6 RSSI: -82
[CHG] Device 2C:xx:xx:xx:xx:B6 RSSI: -81
[CHG] Device 2C:xx:xx:xx:xx:B6 RSSI: -82
[Bluetooth Mouse]# devices
Device 04:xx:xx:xx:xx:37 iMac de Bernard
Device 48:xx:xx:xx:xx:86 xxxxxxxxxxx
Device 53:xx:xx:xx:xx:26 xxxxxxxxxxx
Device 2C:xx:xx:xx:xx:B6 xxxxxxxxxxx
Device 04:xx:xx:xx:xx:87 xxxxxxxxxxx
Device 6C:xx:xx:xx:xx:88 xxxxxxxxxxx
Device 00:xx:xx:xx:xx:32 Bluetooth Mouse
Device 44:xx:xx:xx:xx:8E xxxxxxxxxxx
Device D4:xx:xx:xx:xx:8E xxxxxxxxxxx
Device 77:xx:xx:xx:xx:77 xxxxxxxxxxx
[CHG] Device 2C:xx:xx:xx:xx:B6 RSSI: -82
[CHG] Device 2C:xx:xx:xx:xx:B6 RSSI: -80
[CHG] Device 2C:xx:xx:xx:xx:B6 RSSI: -79
[CHG] Device 53:xx:xx:xx:xx:26 RSSI: -84
[CHG] Device 2C:xx:xx:xx:xx:B6 RSSI: -79
[CHG] Device 2C:xx:xx:xx:xx:B6 RSSI: -79
[CHG] Device 2C:xx:xx:xx:xx:B6 RSSI: -78
[CHG] Device 2C:xx:xx:xx:xx:B6 RSSI: -80
[CHG] Device 2C:xx:xx:xx:xx:B6 RSSI: -82
[CHG] Device 2C:xx:xx:xx:xx:B6 RSSI: -77
[CHG] Device 2C:xx:xx:xx:xx:B6 RSSI: -84
[CHG] Device 2C:xx:xx:xx:xx:B6 RSSI: -78
[CHG] Device 2C:xx:xx:xx:xx:B6 RSSI: -82
[Bluetooth Mouse]# connect 00:xx:xx:xx:xx:32
Attempting to connect to 00:xx:xx:xx:xx:32
Connection successful
[CHG] Device 2C:xx:xx:xx:xx:B6 RSSI: -81
[CHG] Device 2C:xx:xx:xx:xx:B6 RSSI: -84
[CHG] Device 2C:xx:xx:xx:xx:B6 RSSI: -79
[CHG] Device 53:xx:xx:xx:xx:26 RSSI: -86
[CHG] Device 2C:xx:xx:xx:xx:B6 RSSI: -78
[CHG] Device 2C:xx:xx:xx:xx:B6 RSSI: -79
[CHG] Device 2C:xx:xx:xx:xx:B6 RSSI: -81
[CHG] Device 2C:xx:xx:xx:xx:B6 RSSI: -80
[CHG] Device 2C:xx:xx:xx:xx:B6 RSSI: -81
[CHG] Device 2C:xx:xx:xx:xx:B6 RSSI: -79
[CHG] Device 2C:xx:xx:xx:xx:B6 RSSI: -81

Is there a way to get rid of most of these "[CHG]" messages? Kind of bluetoothctl --quiet?

Answer 1

These change entries reporting signal strength (RSSI) show up if you ask bluetoothctl to scan for devices with scan on. Turning on scanning may happen also inadvertently if you have your gnome-control-center bluetooth GUI open as well, which is continuously scanning for devices.