How can I connect Bluetooth headphones to use audio and microphone using a2dp on Linux?

I have Bluetooth headphones that work just fine for playing music, but by default the mic does not work. I can get the mic to work by switching to HFP: pactl set-card-profile (id) handsfree_head_unit This has two problems: This is temporary and has to be done every time I reconnect the headphones. Audio quality is much worse (mono instead of stereo for example). I can see that a2dp has a microphone from pactl list cards : Card #9 Name: id Driver: module-bluez5-device.c Owner Module: 35 Properties: device.description = Bose QC Headphones device.string = id device.api = bluez device.class = soun

Question by Klaus Haukenstein on Super User, licensed CC BY-SA. We show a short excerpt and link to the original thread as credit.