Android 16 will let you share audio to multiple Bluetooth devices at once

[phillynews215]

• Android 16 Developer Preview 1 introduces a new Audio Sharing feature that lets other people listen to your phone’s media along with you.
• This feature is based on Auracast, which is the marketing term for Bluetooth LE Audio broadcasting.
• Of Google’s Pixel phones, only the Pixel 8 and later (excluding the Pixel 8a) support Auracast, however.

Google released the first developer preview of Android 16 earlier today, giving us a sneak peek at what to expect in next year’s big update. As usual, the company didn’t highlight any user-facing changes in its blog post announcing the update, which is understandable since it’s a developer preview. However, after installing the update on one of my own Pixels, I started digging into the update to find out what’s new. To my surprise, a feature that I’ve been tracking for nearly 10 months has finally gone live in DP1: Audio Sharing.

Bluetooth audio sharing is a feature that I first spotted in early previews of Android 15, but the feature didn’t go live in the Android 15 stable release. However, it’s here in Android 16 DP1 on my Pixel 9 Pro, suggesting that Google plans to roll out audio sharing as part of the Android 16 update. Once you load up Android 16 DP1 on a supported Pixel, you can find the audio sharing feature under Settings > Connected devices > Audio sharing.




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