Fast Pair now supports earbuds with Bluetooth LE Audio, but seemingly only on Android 15

Pairing your Bluetooth earbuds to your Android phone can be a bit of a hassle, especially if the process of even getting your earbuds into pairing mode is itself a bit convoluted. To make pairing simpler, Google created Fast Pair, which provides a way for Android devices to quickly pair to compatible Bluetooth accessories. Fast Pair is supported by many different headphones and earbuds, but it currently doesn’t work with audio products that use the new Bluetooth LE Audio standard. That’s changing soon, though.

When Fast Pair-compatible accessories enter pairing mode, they broadcast packets over Bluetooth Low Energy that nearby Android devices automatically pick up during periodic scans. These Android devices then perform a look-up in Google’s Fast Pair database to find details on the accessory that’s broadcasting. Finally, those devices show a pop-up that asks the user whether they want to pair to the broadcasting accessory.

That’s a pretty simplified explanation of how Fast Pair works. In actuality, there’s quite a bit more that goes on behind the scenes. Companies that make audio products need to do a fair amount of work to implement support for the Google Fast Pair Service, which is thoroughly documented on Google’s developer docs.

The docs state that the Google Fast Pair Service is compatible with Bluetooth 4.2 or later, which should mean that all audio products that support Bluetooth LE Audio are compatible as well — Bluetooth LE Audio is, after all, part of the Bluetooth 5.2 spec. However, a warning at the top of one of the pages states that Fast Pair support for Bluetooth LE Audio devices is “exclusively accessible” with the Android 15 release. Google strongly advises manufacturers to implement the new Fast Pair for LE Audio specification, as the company has encountered “numerous issues” with headsets that support LE Audio but lack the “proper” Fast Pair over LE Audio implementation.

Here’s the warning in full:

💡Key Point: The FastPair Low Energy Audio (LEA) capability is exclusively accessible with the Android V (Android 15) release. It is strongly advised to implement Fast Pair BLE Devices specification for LEA-compatible devices. This recommendation stems from our experience with encountering numerous issues with headsets that support LEA but lack the proper Fast Pair over LEA implementation. For further information, kindly refer to the known issue section. The FP LEA certification is only available post Android V (Android 15) release.

At the bottom of the page, Google elaborates a bit further on the known issues impacting Fast Pair over LE Audio support on older Android versions. From my understanding, it seems there are actually two issues at play.

First, there are seemingly some optimizations that make Fast Pair for LE Audio work better with Android 15. It’s not clear what these optimizations are, but it’s possible there are some core changes to the Bluetooth stack in Android 15 that fix issues with Fast Pair for LE Audio. Android 15 is, after all, the same release that Google has been working extensively on to support audio sharing, a feature that’s based on Auracast (the marketing name for Bluetooth LE Audio broadcasting).

When Google says that the Fast Pair for LE Audio certification is only available after the Android 15 release, it’s not clear if that’s because Android 15 is actually required to use Fast Pair for LE Audio, or if there’s another reason for certification to be tied to the OS’s release. The release notes for Google Play Services v24.35, for example, don’t mention that Android 15 is actually required to use Fast Pair for LE Audio. They only mention that, “with updates to Fast Pair, you’ll be able to use LE Audio, the new standard for Bluetooth audio.”

Second, the “numerous issues” that prevent headsets that support LE Audio from supporting Fast Pair for LE Audio appear to stem from the headsets themselves, rather than Android. It seems that audio product makers who attempted to certify their LE Audio products using the existing Fast Pair over Bluetooth Classic implementation were encountering numerous issues. Google says that these problems include a “failure to display earbud battery notifications, lack of Audio Switching (SASS) functionality, widespread initial and subsequent pairing failures, and more.” Therefore, Google says that audio product makers should implement the new Fast Pair for LE Audio specification on both new and existing devices in the field.

The number of headphones and earbuds that support Bluetooth LE Audio is few and far between, so even if Fast Pair for LE Audio requires Android 15, most users won’t be missing out on much. However, the number of audio products that support the new Bluetooth LE Audio standard is steadily increasing each year, and I feel we’re on the cusp of it becoming more mainstream as smartphone makers like Google and Samsung embrace Auracast.