App required - Android Mobile Phone with in-built FM Radio - Want to listen via BLUETOOTH

quoia

Hi everyone
Title basically says it all

Can listen via Bluetooth ear buds all the audio played online, BBC Sounds podcasts, live audio and Youtube etc.

FM Radio is fine using wired headphones or even phone's speaker providing headphones connected as they are also the aerial.

But I want to use the Bluetooth buds to listen to FM radio but NOT ONLINE (Broadcasting restrictions apply in some circumstances)

Googling has produced suggestions but it appears some are not (or no longer) on Play Store (dodgy?) or have been updated and no longer do what is suggested.

Surely someone out there has this working on their phone right at this minute ?

Please tell me which App you are using.

glennevis

Yes, I am listening to FM Radio on my moto g7+ with soundcore earbuds right now.

I'm using the motorola FM Radio app included in the firmware. Not many manufacturers are including FM hardware in their phones nowadays. Just to complicate matters, not all developers were aware of FM radiowaves so, annoyingly, they describe their apps as 'FM' when they are actually just another internet streaming radio app. I'm not aware of any third party apps (a decade ago there was one but it was not free).

I've never tried it before and getting it working was a bit of a faff (configuring the option required lots of taps and pairing/selecting bluetooth 3 times) but I got there in the end.

I guess it will depend on what settings are available in your FM Radio app. YMMV.

When I first tried it I found that as soon as the headphones were connected audio was redirected to them. There is a setting 'Use headphones automatically ' which has to be set to 'No'. After setting that parameter, output was still being diverted to the headphones as soon as they were plugged in. But I discovered that tapping the on/off switch (app icon) fixed that and it's now working.




Now that the app has been configured, once the earbuds have paired the bluetooth device is listed, as the screenshot shows,

Good luck.

quoia

Hi Glen
Thanks for your reply

So let me get this straight. Your moto g7+ has an in-built FM receiver and comes with a FM "tuner" App as standard.
You need to attach corded headphones to act as the FM aerial and either use the headphones themselves or alternatively switch to the phone's internal speaker to listen to the audio.

In your case having enabled Bluetooth and paired with the ear buds, a 3rd option appeared within the settings ?
Headphones, speaker OR Bluetooth device ?

Whilst researching I did find odd references to some Samsung phones offering the Bluetooth connection for true FM reception.

And you think there was a 3rd party App (that did exactly what I need some years ago) but it wasn't free and doesn't exist any more.

Cheers
Q

Vitor

The moto g7+ doesn't have an internal aerial, reading between the lines the poster above had wired earbuds plugged in to provide the aerial but redirected the audio output to bluetooth.

glennevis

Q
Yes almost all of that is correct. (Tuner radio is a better description than fm radio).

The old app would have been running on android 4.1.2 and I doubt you will find any apps for a 13 year old operating system on Google Play Store nowadays. 

You don't say which manufacturer or model number your phone is.

You need all the following to be true
1. phone has the tuner hardware 
2. manufacturer provides the tuner app
3. AND the tuner app has support for all 3 output devices (headphones, speaker, bluetooth)
only then will you get what you want.

By the way, I fired up an old Samsung S2 running android 4.1.2 which does have the hardware and the tuner app, but the app only has 2 options, headphones and speaker. So even though the earbuds will connect via BT so I can listen to music files, it won't play the radio via earbuds.

Instead of searching google go to the xda developers site:

https://www.xda-developers.com/

and search there for your phone's make and model. It can get very geeky but it's your best bet.

quoia

Thanks again
I do have an old (2016) Samsung Galaxy J3 that has Radio Tuner
More recent is my current Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 again with the tuner
Neither seem to offer Bluetooth option

glennevis

"In your case having enabled Bluetooth and paired with the ear buds, a 3rd option appeared within the settings ?"

The third option is always there and says 'bluetooth' if you don't pair your earbuds before launching the tuner app. Once you have gone through the pairing process the word 'bluetooth' is replaced with the name of my earbuds (soundcore).**

The screenshot I posted is what appears in the Motorola app when I was listening via earbuds and tapped the icon at the bottom left of the screen. That expands to show the 3 options.

ETA

** if your tuner app doesn't have the Bluetooth option you have no way of choosing it.

xda developers site may have custom firmware to address your requirements, enter your make and model number. However very few developers provide apps to support that hardware feature (even back in 2012 when it was more common).

quoia

Thanks mate.
I'll try the XDA route

Cheers
Q