Lately I’d been having issues with my Moto G3 while connecting with Bluetooth handsfree headsets and the Bluetooth car audio system. The phone was running on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with the latest software updates pushed out by Motorloa. It seems this is a common problem with this version of Android, and I ended up digging through multiple forums before I could find a fix that worked, so I thought I’d post what works, so that others don’t have to go through multiple pages to fix their devices!

Of course, why such a basic (known) issue hasn’t been addressed by Google so far, really reflects poorly on their support and commitment to the Android system. It seems that Google is heading in the direction of Microsoft, releasing buggy software and then leaving hapless users to figure out fixes on their own.

The symptoms were: the phone would connect/ pair with the handsfree/ car audio and was able to playback audio via these connections BUT when it came to taking calls or making calls, the Bluetooth refused to function. This was especially problematic while driving as the only option was to stop the car and take the call via the phone’s earpiece/ speaker.

Digging deeper: I went into “Settings” -> “Bluetooth” and clicked the settings for the individual devices (the gear icon next to the saved bluetooth device name). I found that the under “Use for” the check box next to “Phone audio” had unchecked itself, for each of them. Also, the phone refused to allow me to select that option i.e. to check the “Phone audio” checkbox.

Since this was happening with 2 very different Bluetooth devices and both had been working fine earlier, and continued to work fine with my wife’s iPhone – I had to discount the possibility of there being something wrong with either of them. The problem had to be with my Android phone.

Search for a solution: I started searching for a fix online. One fix suggested that I go to “Settings” -> “Backup & reset” -> “Network settings reset” and proceed to do a reset followed by a reboot of the phone. I tried this and proceeded to pair the devices afresh. Voila, they were working now! However, my joy was short lived as within a few hours the same problems resurfaced. 🙁 The Second fix I tried (as suggested on a forum online) was to wipe the cache partition. Once again, this resulted in said devices working briefly, before the problem resurfaced! Clearly, there was something else at play here.

What works (so far). Further searches finally revealed a solution, that has the devices working fine for the past few days. It’s a two step process:

a) Step one, go to “Settings” -> “Memory” -> “Memory used by apps” -> “Bluetooth Share” and click on the “i” (in a circle) icon on the top right hand corner. Now click on “Storage” and then click “Clear data”. Now exit back to the “Settings” main menu.

b) Step two, go to “Settings” -> “Location” and click on the three dots on the top right hand corner click “Scanning”. Disable both “Wi-Fi scanning” and “Bluetooth scanning”. Now exit out and reboot the phone.

Now when you pair your Bluetooth devices, the audio/ handsfree should work just fine.

Hope this helps! 🙂