Fast Pair will make it easier to connect Bluetooth keyboards to your Chromebook or Android tablet

Whether it’s your headphones, your smartwatch, your mouse, or your keyboard, you probably use Bluetooth to wirelessly connect your devices each and every day. So many devices use the wireless communications standard that you might end up pairing or repairing them once every couple of days. Pairing Bluetooth devices can be a hassle, which is why Google created Fast Pair, a feature that greatly simplifies the Bluetooth pairing process. Fast Pair currently works with accessories like headphones, smartwatches, tracker tags, and mice, but Google is preparing to expand support to keyboards.

Google Fast Pair Service, or just Fast Pair for short, was introduced back in 2017 and was originally designed to simplify connecting audio accessories like speakers, headphones, and car kits with devices running Android. It’s implemented in the Google Play Services app on Android phones, tablets, smartwatches, and TVs, which means it’s available on any Android device that ships with Google apps preinstalled. Since March of 2023, it’s also been available in the Chrome OS operating system running on Chromebooks.

The way Fast Pair works is quite clever: When they enter pairing mode, Fast Pair accessories broadcast specific Bluetooth Low Energy packets that Android devices and Chromebooks automatically pick up through periodic scans. These devices then check the Fast Pair database to find the matching accessory as well as any information saved in the database about the accessory, such as its name, a render, and potentially a link to a companion app. The scanning and lookup all happen in the background, so all users end up seeing is a half-page notification that contains the information on the accessory and a button to pair the device.

Fast Pair, therefore, takes all the legwork out of pairing a new Bluetooth accessory to your Android device or Chromebook. If you buy a Fast Pair-enabled accessory, you don’t have to manually open Bluetooth settings on Android or Chrome OS, scan for a new device, find the particular device in what could be a massive list, pray that it connects, and then confirm the pairing.

When you’re pairing a Bluetooth keyboard, the confirmation process usually involves typing a PIN that’s shown on the screen of the device you’re pairing to. This step is necessary so random Bluetooth keyboards can’t connect to your device and start sending inputs, but it makes pairing to new devices a bit of a hassle. Bluetooth keyboards aren’t supported by Fast Pair yet, though that could change in the future.

Earlier this week, a patch titled “[Fast Pair] Add Fast Pair Keyboards flag” was merged into the Chromium Gerrit. This patch adds a new Chrome OS flag for “FP [Fast Pair] keyboards prototype work.” The flag is currently disabled by default, but it “enables prototype support for Fast Pair for keyboards.”

A separate patch reveals that Fast Pair support for Bluetooth HID devices, such as mice and keyboards, only works on “Floss.”

Floss is the port of Android’s Fluoride Bluetooth stack for Linux, and it replaced the older BlueZ stack in Chrome OS 122 as part of Google’s efforts to use large portions of Android’s tech stack. With the shift to Floss, Google added new features like Fast Pair support for Bluetooth HID devices, which resulted in Fast Pair support for mice being added in Chrome OS 124. It seems that in the future, Google wants to expand Fast Pair support to Bluetooth keyboards as well, though we don’t know when this will happen, as the company is evidently still in the prototyping stage.

Although the new flag is only for Chrome OS, that doesn’t mean Android devices won’t support Fast Pair for keyboards. Fast Pair on Android devices is handled through the Google Play Services app, which isn’t open source and uses a different flag system than Chrome OS, so it makes sense that the flag is only for Chromebooks. It’s likely that Android devices will support this too, which will be especially helpful for Android tablet users as they’re more inclined to pair a Bluetooth keyboard to their device.

Bluetooth keyboard makers will need to specifically implement Fast Pair support, though, so don’t expect any existing keyboards to support the feature. Hopefully this upgrade to Fast Pair will be ready for the launch of the Pixel Tablet 2, which we’re hoping will come with an official keyboard accessory.