feat: Support BLE extended advertisements

[roman-yerin]

Plugin(s)

• Accelerometer
• Age Signals
• Android Battery Optimization
• Android Dark Mode Support
• Android Edge-to-Edge Support
• Android Foreground Service
• App Review
• App Shortcuts
• App Update
• Asset Manager
• Audio Player
• Audio Recorder
• Background Task
• Badge
• Barometer
• Biometrics
• Bluetooth Low Energy
• Cloudinary
• Contacts
• Datetime Picker
• File Compressor
• File Opener
• File Picker
• Geocoder
• libSQL
• Live Update
• Managed Configurations
• Media Session
• NFC
• Pedometer
• Photo Editor
• Posthog
• Purchases
• Printer
• RealtimeKit
• Secure Preferences
• Screen Orientation
• Screenshot
• Speech Recognition
• Speech Synthesis
• Share Target
• Square Mobile Payments
• SQLite
• Superwall
• Torch
• Zip

Current problem

Currently, the plugin supports BLE 4.0 advertisements, which limit the transmitted data (in connectionless mode) to roughly 27–31 bytes. This is quite restrictive for most IoT use cases and significantly reduces the plugin's overall usability.

Preferred solution

BLE 5.0 extended advertising lifts this limit dramatically:

Single packet → up to ~250–254 bytes of advertising data
Chained packets → up to 1650 bytes total
Most current devices (iOS, Android, Windows, recent Nordic/TI/ESP32/etc. chips) already support this feature.
See e.g. https://blog.nordicsemi.com/getconnected/bluetooth-5-advertising-extensions for a good overview.

Alternative options

No response

Additional context

No response

Before submitting

• I have read and followed the feature request guidelines.
• I have attached links to possibly related issues and discussions.

[robingenz]

Do you have a link to Android or iOS documentation or the name of a specific API? As far as I know, there are no separate APIs for Bluetooth 5. Android and iOS offer uniform APIs and automatically use Bluetooth 5 when it is available.

[roman-yerin]

https://source.android.com/docs/core/connect/bluetooth/ble_advertising

Alas, I was not able to find the same for iOS; maybe they do not allow third parties to use extended advertisements.
Although this inconsistency produces some platform-specific differences in behavior, I think the new BLE capabilities unlocked are worth it.

[robingenz]

Thank you. I will take a look at it and get back to you this weekend.

[robingenz]

@roman-yerin We have published a dev version supporting this feature:

npm i @capawesome-team/capacitor-bluetooth-low-energy@8.0.2-dev.c052a3c5.1769334361

Please give it a try and let me know if you encounter any issues.

Usage example:

import {                                                                                                                      
  BluetoothLowEnergy,                                                                                                         
  AdvertisingInterval,                                                                                                        
  AdvertisingTxPowerLevel,                                                                                                    
  AdvertisingPhy,                                                                                                             
} from '@capawesome-team/capacitor-bluetooth-low-energy';                                                                     
                                                                                                                              
const startExtendedAdvertising = async () => {                                                                                
  // Check if extended advertising is available                                                                               
  const { isAvailable, maxAdvertisingDataLength } =                                                                           
    await BluetoothLowEnergy.isExtendedAdvertisingAvailable();                                                                
  console.log('Extended advertising:', isAvailable, maxAdvertisingDataLength);                                                
                                                                                                                              
  // Start advertising with extended settings                                                                                 
  await BluetoothLowEnergy.startAdvertising({                                                                                 
    services: [                                                                                                               
      {                                                                                                                       
        id: '0000180A-0000-1000-8000-00805F9B34FB',                                                                           
        characteristics: [                                                                                                    
          {                                                                                                                   
            id: '00002A29-0000-1000-8000-00805F9B34FB',                                                                       
            descriptors: [],                                                                                                  
            permissions: { read: true, write: true },                                                                         
            properties: { read: true, write: true, notify: true },                                                            
          },                                                                                                                  
        ],                                                                                                                    
      },                                                                                                                      
    ],                                                                                                                        
    serviceData: {                                                                                                            
      '0000180A-0000-1000-8000-00805F9B34FB': [0x01, 0x02, 0x03, 0x04, 0x05],                                                 
    },                                                                                                                        
    settings: {                                                                                                               
      legacyMode: false,                                                                                                      
      connectable: true,                                                                                                      
      interval: AdvertisingInterval.LOW_LATENCY,                                                                              
      txPowerLevel: AdvertisingTxPowerLevel.HIGH,                                                                             
      primaryPhy: AdvertisingPhy.PHY_LE_1M,                                                                                   
      secondaryPhy: AdvertisingPhy.PHY_LE_2M,                                                                                 
    },                                                                                                                        
  });                                                                                                                         
};                    

[robingenz]

@roman-yerin Did you had a chance to test it?

[robingenz]

@roman-yerin Are you still interested in that feature or can we close this?