For those who travel with friends or family, sharing audio can be a challenge. Whether it’s a movie or a shared playlist, current Bluetooth limitations restrict streaming to one device at a time. Fortunately, the Bluetooth LE Audio standard and its Auracast feature offer a solution to this.
Auracast allows you to stream audio to neighboring devices via Bluetooth Low Energy. Unlike traditional Bluetooth, Auracast does not require pairing between a source and a destination device.
In such cases, you can imagine that your phone works as a mini-radio tower, transmitting an audio stream that other devices can receive.
That’s not to say that smartphones don’t have such features for sharing audio files. But they are often limited by their mini-ecosystem.
For example, Samsung phones have a “Dual Audio” feature that allows you to send audio files to two different Bluetooth devices at the same time. But it requires certain Samsung devices to work. There’s also Apple’s Share Audio feature, but it only works between iPhones.
Auracast, on the other hand, is available for any device or platform that licenses the technology from the Bluetooth SIG, the governing body for Bluetooth standards.
Although Auracast was announced in 2022, smartphone manufacturers have already adopted it. However, when Bluetooth LE Audio becomes a standard feature, this changes.
Most importantly, Android 15 introduces a dedicated “audio streams” page by default to manage Auracast streams. This feature allows users to find, connect to, or initiate their own Auracast broadcast.
In a blog post on Android Authority, Mishal Rahman reports that he managed to enable this feature on his Pixel 8 Pro running Android 15 Beta 1.1, which allowed him to successfully connect to Samsung Galaxy devices running One UI 6.1.
It is noteworthy that these devices required Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro headphones that support Auracast.
According to the message, to start an Auracast stream on Android 15, the user needs to go to Settings > Connected devices > Connection settings > Audio sharing. There will be a “Share audio” switch that initiates the stream.
Michall notes that for a secure connection, users can set a broadcast name and password in the “stream settings”. In addition, they can also generate a QR code so that others can scan it and join the stream.
Once connected, according to Michall, both devices played the same sound through their respective headphones. It should be noted, however, that Auracast only supports one-way broadcasts. This means that connected devices cannot control playback on the source device.
