Android 15 could bring a Bluetooth auto-on feature

When you switch your Bluetooth off on an Android phone, you expect it to stay off until you enable it again. This is how it’s been. However, Android 15 may change that with a Bluetooth auto-on feature.

Right now, people are digging into the latest Android 15 developer preview and Android 14 Beta release to figure out what sort of features to expect from Android 15. So far, we’ve gotten hints at features such as the app archiving feature, the Auracast multi-device streaming feature, the revamped volume panel, Etc. As time goes on, we’re going to discover more features and additions to the software that will help characterize Android 15.

Android 15 may bring a Bluetooth auto-on feature

As stated before, when you turn off Bluetooth, you’re going to want to keep it off until you turn it back on. However, since the company is about to launch its Find My Device network, it seems like Google doesn’t want you to be able to keep your Bluetooth off for long.

The Find My Device network seems like it will be similar to Apple’s Find My network. Different Android devices will be able to contact and ping other devices via Bluetooth. This will help people pinpoint their devices if they ever lose it.

So, this new feature may be a result of that. Digging into the Android 14 QPR 2 update, Android engineer Mishaal Rahman was able to find some strings of code alluding to this feature. This was discovered via an APK Deep dive, so this news should be taken with a grain of salt.

For starters, when you turn off your Bluetooth radio within the Quick Settings panel, you will see a dialog pop up saying, “Features like Quick Share, Find My Device, and device location use Bluetooth”. So, this is a dialogue that will pop up to dissuade you from turning off your Bluetooth radio.

Also, when enabled, you will see a toggle appear that will automatically turn the Bluetooth back on the next day. You will also be able to find a similar dialogue when you go to your Bluetooth settings page in the system settings.

A few things to note about this

Firstly, you don’t have to worry about Shady apps using this Bluetooth Auto-on feature. Only system-level apps will be able to use it. So, you should only expect native Android apps to be able to use this feature.

Also, looking at the code, it appears that this will not be exclusive to Android 15. It’s possible that Google could distribute this to older versions of Android. While that is the case, it appears that it won’t be available for all devices. However, we’ll have to wait and see.