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I want to disable the onboard Wi-Fi & Bluetooth, so as to connect an external Wi-Fi adapter on it for Hotspot configuration.

Since I searched on the internet, I find that we have to edit a blacklist file : /etc/modprobe.d/raspi-blacklist.conf and we should add the configuration below.

Wi-Fi

 blacklist brcmfmac
 blacklist brcmutil

Bluetooth

blacklist btbcm
blacklist hci_uart

Since I do this, my hotspot on my external adapter is not working anymore but when I ifconfig I see the wlan0 of my adapter...

Is there a better option to disable the internal Wi-Fi ?

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1
  • Have you tried ifconfig wlan0 down; ifconfig wlan1 up;?
    – Shan-Desai
    Commented Feb 9, 2017 at 23:01

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
19

Yes, there is a better way.

You can edit /boot/config.txt and add this two lines:

dtoverlay=disable-wifi
dtoverlay=disable-bt

After reboot, WiFi & Bluetooth will be fully disabled.

More info on: https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware/blob/master/boot/overlays/README

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  • 1
    Does disabling WiFi and Bluetooth "reduce the energy footprint" of the Pi further?
    – der_michael
    Commented Oct 20, 2020 at 16:33
  • Sorry for the delay. Yes, it does but it is hard to know how much the consumption is reduced. To have an accurate value an external device between the power supply and rpi should be used.
    – Gabriel Gonzalez
    Commented Nov 7, 2020 at 21:07

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