How to fix Bluetooth on your Android

Having trouble establishing a Bluetooth connection on your Android cell phone? Was the Bluetooth on your phone working fine and now it won’t even show an available connection? Is your Bluetooth having pairing issues? Will your Bluetooth not even switch on? Here are some suggestions and tricks that you can use to get your Bluetooth back up and running properly again.

Finding the proper solution

There are actually many things that can cause Bluetooth issues to occur on an Android smartphone and the fix that works for your phone is going to depend on what is actually causing your Bluetooth not to function properly.

This guide will start with the basics and provide troubleshooting that can be done to resolve the most common Bluetooth issues and will progress to more in-depth troubleshooting. So let’s start from the basics and go from there.

Power cycle

If your cell phone started to suddenly have Bluetooth issues unexpectedly and out of the blue then try simply powering your Android cell phone off, wait a minute (30-60 seconds), and then power the phone back on. Then try to establish a connection again and see if this simple trick helped to fix it. If not then proceed to the next suggestion.

Battery pull

Much like powering your cell phone off and then back on, another form of soft reset for an Android device is to remove the battery while the device is powered on. Wait about 30 seconds, plug the battery back in, power the phone on and see if the Bluetooth will connect.

Remember that not all cell phones are designed to have a removable battery. If your cell phone does not allow you to remove its battery then you can skip this portion of troubleshooting.

Clear the Cache

If your Bluetooth was connected and working properly and you tried to adjust a setting on the phone only to find that your Bluetooth stopped connecting or pairing correctly then this (or the next suggestion) should be exactly what you are looking for.

There might be a setting in your phone which is now preventing your Android’s Bluetooth from connecting to or even recognizing an available Bluetooth to sync to. So start by clearing the cache in your Bluetooth settings. 

The method that you use to access the Bluetooth settings and clear its cache is going to depend on what make and model of cell phone you are currently using as well as what version of Android is currently installed on the device.

What you are going to need to locate is your phones “Application manager” or an option to “Manage applications”. This feature will let you view all of the applications installed on your phone and you will be able to locate your Bluetooth feature and its settings.

A common way to access this setting and clear the cache on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean is to open the phones Settings, tap the More tab > tap Application manager > view ALL > Bluetooth share > tapClear cache.

Note: “Bluetooth share” is a common name for the Bluetooth feature on an Android cell phone but if you cannot locate a “Bluetooth share” option then it might be labeled differently. Typically it will still have the word “Bluetooth” in its label.

Once you clear the cache, power cycle or restart your cell phone, try your Bluetooth and see if it’s working properly. If not then along with the cache try clearing your Bluetooth Data as well.

Clear the data

Before clearing the Bluetooth data make sure to record any important Bluetooth connections that you do not think you will be able to remember or setup again. This step in troubleshooting will tell your phone to make your Bluetooth feature start fresh and clean again and as such it will erase any current connections saved in your Bluetooth’s connection log/memory. This shouldn’t be a big issue as you will be able to simply re-connect to those Bluetooth connections when you need to use them again but I thought I would mention it for good measure.

To clear the Bluetooth app data it’s pretty much the same steps used when clearing its cache only instead of “Clear cache” you’re going to select the “Clear data” option. So open the phones Settings, tap theMore tab > tap Application manager > view ALL > Bluetooth share >Clear data.

Once the Data is also cleared then restart the phone and enjoy your working Bluetooth. Don’t forget to let me know if this helped fix your cell phone by pressing the Facebook Like or Google + button(s) at the bottom of this article.

If for some reason your Bluetooth is still having trouble then keep reading for some additional suggestions.

Safe Mode

This issue with your Bluetooth might be the result of an application on your cell phone not playing nice with another application or conflicting with its software. To help rule out this scenario then you can try using your phone in Safe Mode.

Safe Mode allows the phone to run without any third party applications and can help you to locate apps that are causing mischief. If the phone runs properly while in Safe mode then it means that an app is in fact causing problems and you can start going through your recently installed or recently updated apps to locate the troublemaker. Just uninstall the app(s) that you believe might be the cause, reboot, test and if necessary repeat. Once you have found the app that’s causing problems you can re-install it, see if that helps, or simply keep it uninstalled and off of your phone.

Check the other device

Usually pairing the Bluetooth on your cell phone with another device is pretty straightforward and very user friendly. If you are still having difficulties pairing to another device then try and make sure to check that device to make sure that it is functioning properly. It may not be an issue with your phone but an issue with that other device.

So make sure that the other unit is setup correctly and that you are trying to pair your phone to that device properly. If by the off chance another phone can pair to that other device but your phone is still having issues then there can still be a problem with the software on your device (which the next section of this article should help solve) or a hardware issue where an actual piece of the phone is defective or malfunctioning in which case you will have to look into your repair or replacement options (which we’ll cover later in the article as well).

Hard reset

Performing a factory data reset is usually a last resort when troubleshooting as it erases all user data from the cell phone in question. It is however a very powerful troubleshooting tool as it removes everything from the phone which includes any viruses, software bugs or glitches, troublesome programs, bad apps, and also puts all of the phones settings back to factory default. So if there is something on the phone that’s causing problems and you can’t find what it is chances are a factory data reset can help you get rid of it.

Warranty and repair options

If you have performed all of the suggestions listed above and your Bluetooth still will not turn on or function properly then you have pretty much exhausted all available troubleshooting that you can do yourself and I recommend that you start looking into your repair or replacement options.

Enjoy and thank you for reading