This Samsung and Google competitor is bringing Bluetooth audio sharing to its smartphones

Sharing your phone’s audio is easy if you don’t mind being that person who blasts their music in public, but it’s challenging if you want others to privately listen in. That’s because most smartphones only support streaming audio to a single Bluetooth device. Fortunately, a key feature of the next-generation Bluetooth LE Audio standard enables streaming audio to multiple Bluetooth devices, and it’s coming to flagship smartphones from one of the leading smartphone brands.

Xiaomi, the consumer tech giant that’s behind some of this year’s best Android phones, has enabled support for Auracast on its flagship phones released in 2024. Auracast, if you aren’t aware, is a feature of the Bluetooth LE Audio standard that lets devices broadcast audio to one or more nearby devices over Bluetooth Low Energy.

Unlike traditional audio streaming over Bluetooth, though, Auracast doesn’t require pairing devices. Instead, a single device broadcasts audio over the air (sort of like a radio tower) that other nearby devices can pick up on. Of course, these broadcasts can’t travel over long distances given the size of most smartphones and the limitations of Bluetooth, but they enable a use case that’s never been possible before over Bluetooth: one-to-many audio sharing.

How to share audio on Xiaomi devices

Xiaomi has been experimenting with Auracast since late last year with the release of the Xiaomi 13T series. On the 13T Pro, I noticed there was a “Broadcast audio from this device” option under Settings > Additional settings > Developer options. Toggling this would immediately start an Auracast session that other compatible devices nearby — such as the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 — could connect to.

However, with the release of its 2024 flagship phones, Auracast is no longer hidden from users as a developer option. Instead, it can be found under Settings > Bluetooth > Additional settings > Broadcast audio. This broadcast audio menu is available on my Xiaomi Mix Flip as well as my Xiaomi 14T Pro, but I’ve also confirmed it can be found on the Xiaomi 14 as well.

Under the broadcast audio settings page, you can start or connect to a nearby Bluetooth LE Audio broadcast (ie. Auracast session). Audio that you share over broadcasts is “automatically encrypted” for your privacy and can only be listened to by nearby devices that support audio broadcasting after they enter a four-letter connection code or scan a QR code. When you’re broadcasting audio, your own phone’s speakers and connected Bluetooth devices that don’t support audio broadcasting won’t play any audio, so you’ll need to connect a compatible headset to listen to your own broadcast.

Once you start sharing audio, Hyper OS will show a notification that informs you that you’re broadcasting. You can tap the stop button from the notification to immediately end the Auracast session. On global versions of Hyper OS, tapping the media output switcher button in the media player notification will show a dialog that tells you that changing the output will end the broadcast.

How to listen to an audio broadcast on Xiaomi devices

The same Xiaomi devices that are capable of sharing audio over Bluetooth LE Audio are also able to listen in on broadcasts started by other devices. That includes Xiaomi’s 2024 flagships so far, i.e. the Xiaomi 14 series, Xiaomi Mix Flip, Xiaomi Mix Fold 4, and Xiaomi 14T series. However, there’s a slight catch: You need to connect an Auracast-capable headset to your Xiaomi phone.

I call this a catch because I don’t know which Auracast-capable headsets, if any, these Xiaomi devices even support. I attempted to listen in on an Auracast session using my Galaxy Buds 2 Pro and Galaxy Buds 3 Pro, both of which support Auracast, but neither was seen as compatible by Hyper OS. It seems that neither headset was actually connecting to my Xiaomi Mix Flip via Bluetooth LE Audio, which is why they weren’t able to connect to the Auracast session started by my Galaxy Z Fold 6.

Thus, while it’s fair to say that Xiaomi’s 2024 flagship phones support Auracast, I’d say there are still some kinks to be ironed out. That’s fine for now, considering how few audio products even support Auracast, let alone Bluetooth LE Audio. Hopefully, Xiaomi will bring this feature to as many of its smartphones and audio products as possible in the future. Audio sharing is going to be a major feature of a future Android 15 update, so it would be great to see Xiaomi join forces with Samsung and Google to bring Auracast to everyone.