Enable BLE v2 support for iOS

[Romoli-Gabriele]

here ask for all supported mediums but it returns only wifi lan

StartAdvertising with supported mediums: { WIFI_LAN }

[bourdakos1]

We currently have BLE disabled on iOS due to some bugs, but you can enable it by setting this flag to true:

nearby/connections/implementation/flags/nearby_connections_feature_flags.h

Line 32 in 21d2efb

constexpr auto kEnableBleV2 =

[Grbson00]

Hello, I was wondering if there's any rough estimate for when this feature might be completed? I understand that these things can take time, but having a general idea would be helpful for planning purposes.

[bourdakos1]

Unfortunately we don’t have a timeline yet. BLE is working pretty well between iOS devices, but there can be some discovery/connection issues with Android. We aren’t comfortable enough to enable for production, but we’ve exposed the flag in the library, so you can enable it and try it out for yourself using: “GNCFlags.enableBLEV2 = true”

[albertmonzo]

@bourdakos1 Hey Nick, Albert from Monzo here. We were reviewing wether we are able to migrate our Nearby Messages integration to Nearby Connections, has there been any progress on iOS BLE?

[bourdakos1]

@albertmonzo We are currently rolling out some required changes to Nearby Connections on the Android side, but they haven't made it to production yet. Once those changes are live, I will post a status update here.

[anandgupadhyay]

@bourdakos1 and @albertmonzo I am into similar situation where I want to connect 2 devices (iOS or Android) and also determine proximate distance between devices using Nearby connection. if you can guide

[bourdakos1]

@anandgupadhyay The Nearby Connections API doesn’t currently provide proximity information, so it may not be the right choice for you

[timmyjose]

@bourdakos1 Reading through the whole thread, and some of the comments in here, I'm not sure if the Nearby Messages API would still work today? As in, for a Greenfield project. The documentation warns that the Nearby Messages API was deprecated in Decemeber, 2023? How are people still using it then?

We are also interested in using the Nearby API, but we're a React Native app, and the only libraries found thus far are for the Nearby Messages API.

Could you please give your thoughts on this?

[championofblocks]

@bourdakos1 hi Nick, Niall from Monzo here. 👋🏻 Just wondering if there had been any progress on this since your last update? We have been able to integrate the Nearby Connections library on iOS and Android and everything seems to be working well with the exception of iOS <-> Android BLE connections, which don't currently seem possible

[bourdakos1]

Hey @championofblocks, the changes mentioned in #1619 (comment) are still being rolled out to Android. However, we have also ran into an issue where a recent iOS update has broken BLE GATT connections between iOS <-> Android, when the Android device is the one doing the scanning. This has been resolved in Android 15+, which is not ideal, so we are looking into alternatives like L2CAP, which would support Android 11+. Nearby Messages will continue to function until we resolve this.

[championofblocks]

@bourdakos1 thanks for the update