Bluetooth

Solution

Click here to see advert at CCL Online where I purchased the ASUS dongle, they recommended in April 2021, for connecting to Bluetooth on Cloudready - works a dream whereas other dongles failed.

Click here for a HowToGeek article from April 2021 "How to Connect Bluetooth Devices to a Chromebook" and examples of pairing with a mouse.

Click here for the full 9to5google article from late 2019 about Chrome OS developments with bluetooth.

This is an extract of a couple of key points ...

Earlier this year, it was discovered that Google was hard at work creating support for Bluetooth accessories to show their battery levels in Chrome OS’s UI. The feature has since progressed all the way into Chrome OS Stable without our notice.

To get Chrome OS to start showing your battery levels, simply head over to chrome://flags and search for the following flag.

Show Bluetooth device battery

Enables showing the battery level of connected and supported Bluetooth devices in the System Tray and Settings UI. — Chrome OS

#show-bluetooth-device-battery

Once enabled the current battery percentage for each of your active Bluetooth accessories will be available in the Settings app,

However there are two caveats you should know about.

The first caveat is that not every Bluetooth device reports its battery life to Chrome OS, for example in our testing a set of Made for Google headphones didn’t show its battery life, while the excellent Brydge C-Type Keyboard for Chrome OS shows its percentage as expected.

More critically, the second caveat is that some of your Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) devices may cease working when the flag is enabled. It was originally Google’s intention to fully launch Chrome OS’s Bluetooth battery indicator with Chrome OS 78, without needing a flag, but an issue was quickly discovered.

According to comments on the Chromium Issue Tracker, something in the new battery feature is causing some Bluetooth LE accessories, like a mouse or keyboard, to refuse to connect. In the months since the issue was discovered, no public-facing progress has been made, making it impossible to know when Chrome OS’s Bluetooth battery life features will formally launch.

Thankfully, if you don’t use Bluetooth LE accessories you should have no issues enabling the flag today and enjoying the small convenience of knowing how much battery life your (compatible) headphones have left.