How to use android emulator for testing bluetooth application?

You can't. The emulator does not support Bluetooth, as mentioned in the SDK's docs and several other places. Android emulator does not have bluetooth capabilities".

You can only use real devices.

Emulator Limitations

The functional limitations of the emulator include:

  • No support for placing or receiving actual phone calls. However, You can simulate phone calls (placed and received) through the emulator console
  • No support for USB
  • No support for device-attached headphones
  • No support for determining SD card insert/eject
  • No support for WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC

Refer to the documentation


Now, in Android Studio 2022.1.1 (Electric eel) you can connect with Bluetooth between 2 emulators. Official docs from Google.


It seems this has changed recently and they are now supporting Bluetooth as well in emulators with new API versions & google play services.

I'm using API level 32 with google play services to create emulators.

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Download Androidx86 from this This is an iso file, so you'd
need something like VMWare or VirtualBox to run it When creating the virtual machine, you need to set the type of guest OS as Linux instead of Other.

After creating the virtual machine set the network adapter to 'Bridged'. · Start the VM and select 'Live CD VESA' at boot.

Now you need to find out the IP of this VM. Go to terminal in VM (use Alt+F1 & Alt+F7 to toggle) and use the netcfg command to find this.

Now you need open a command prompt and go to your android install folder (on host). This is usually C:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools>.

Type adb connect IP_ADDRESS. There done! Now you need to add Bluetooth. Plug in your USB Bluetooth dongle/Bluetooth device.

In VirtualBox screen, go to Devices>USB devices. Select your dongle.

Done! now your Android VM has Bluetooth. Try powering on Bluetooth and discovering/paring with other devices.

Now all that remains is to go to Eclipse and run your program. The Android AVD manager should show the VM as a device on the list.

Alternatively, Under settings of the virtual machine, Goto serialports -> Port 1 check Enable serial port select a port number then select port mode as disconnected click ok. now, start virtual machine. Under Devices -> USB Devices -> you can find your laptop bluetooth listed. You can simply check the option and start testing the android bluetooth application .

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