There are many great improvements to Raspberry Pi OS for the Pi enthusiasts.
- Chromium browser updated to version 84, which allows smoother video playback in sites like Youtube.com.
- PulseAudio sound server instead of ALSA, which allows for simultaneous playback and improves Bluetooth options.
- CUPS, the Common Unix Printing System was added so that wifi printers are now accessible.
- For the visually impaired: The screen reader audio can now be played through Bluetooth devices and improvements to Orca screen reader support.
To update your Raspberry Pi to this new OS update, open a terminal and type:
sudo apt update sudo apt full-upgrade
Then, install the PulseAudio Bluetooth support:
sudo apt purge bluealsa sudo apt install pulseaudio-module-bluetooth
Next step is to reboot your Pi. Enjoy! 🙂
For those having issues updating the audio, the Pi Foundation created this guide:
To swap over the volume and input selector on the taskbar from ALSA to PulseAudio, after your Raspberry Pi has restarted, right-click a blank area on the taskbar and choose Add / Remove Panel Items. Find the plugin labelled Volume Control (ALSA/BT) in the list, select it and click Remove; then click the Add button, find the plugin labelled Volume Control (PulseAudio) and click Add. Alternatively, just open the Appearance Settings application from the Preferences section of the Main Menu, go to the Defaults tab and press one of the Set Defaults buttons.
Some people have reported that some applications are ignoring the effect of the PulseAudio output switcher. This is probably caused by an old ALSA configuration file still being on the system. Once you have updated, execute the following in a terminal window, which should fix this:
rm ~/.asoundrc
To remove the old Audio Preferences application, which will not work with PulseAudio, do:
sudo apt purge pimixer