How to Connect Bluetooth speaker with zoom?

[jockers]

I think the distinction might be that your earbuds have a microphone and thus have bluetooth headset mode (or whatever it's called).  Due to echo canceler software issues there are problems with using any bluetooth audio output which doesn't have a microphone built in to it.  I feel like Zoom probably specifically disables this because they don't want to have to deal with echo cancelation.

[LisaShea]

Thank you SO MUCH. I would like to report that we have a Samsung S21Ultra with Earfun Free Pro 2 earbuds. They have worked for everything EXCEPT Zoom since about the beginning of 2022. They work perfectly well with everything else. So it was definitely something about Zoom not working.

We followed the Luv2Zoom instructions:

1) Turn off Bluetooth

2) Turn off earbuds

3) Reboot phone

4) Start Zoom

5) Turn on Bluetooth

6) Turn on earbuds

That works perfectly for Zoom.

Thank you so much!!

[achridhan]

yeah have same issue.. by changing step 3 by force close zoom.. didn't change anything.. seem zoom remember the setting even the bug miss direct sound..

[mmidgley]

thanks for the suggestion. unfortunately it fails too readily. for example, if you get a phone call during the meeting, even if you decline it, you are no longer on bt audio and cannot get back. it's just horribly broken; something that works for every other app I deal with.... unbelievable.

[jianwu]

Same problem for Xiaomi Mi 10. All other apps works well with bluetooth. Only zoom doesn't work. And when zoom meeting is running. All the other apps's audio will also stop working with bluetooth. I have to end zoom meeting to let other apps to connect to bluetooth again. All the suggestions above doesn't work at all. It's obviously a bug that messes up the bluetooth. Which causes big in-convenience.   

[brucew]

Over two years of using Zoom I've never been able to get Zoom to use bluetooth speakers or earbuds from any Android device.  The speaker option that is shown during a meeting just switches to using the phone's earpiece instead of the speakers.  Currently this is on a Samsung S20 FE 5G.  They've clearly done some tricky audio programming instead of using standard APIs since all other programs (even very simple ones) that I use all switch to the earbuds when they connect.

I'm happy to assist in testing if they decide to address the problem.

[LisaShea]

Try this:

1) Turn off Bluetooth

2) Turn off earbuds

3) Reboot phone

4) Start Zoom

5) Turn on Bluetooth

6) Turn on earbuds

That worked for us on a S21 Ultra.

[jockers]

Since my original post in this thread I got a Galaxy 4 smart watch and now the Android Zoom app behavior is even worse.  The zoom meeting audio still refuses to connect to a bluetooth speaker (no matter how many times I disconnect/reconnect it, tap the audio icon which shows a bluetooth logo, etc).  However, now no matter what I do in software settings I could not get the Zoom meeting audio to NOT play on the smart watch!  I finally had to power off the smart watch so I could even have a chance of adjusting meeting audio settings in the app (which never worked to send the audio to the bluetooth speaker).

Based on this I have concluded the Zoom Android app is functionally unusable.   I hope Zoom product people or software engineers might check this thread at some point, this thread is going on a year with no resolution.

Zoom engineers/product people: the use case for a bluetooth speaker is Zoom all hands meetings where there is zero chance I will need to participate but I want higher quality audio, or need louder levels, than I can get from my phone (or smart watch).

[mmidgley]

This bug has existed way too long and this kinda shows Zoom's commitment level to fixing things.

However, if you contact Zoom support they will ask lots of questions and eventually ask you to install a test version (via APK file) of their Zoom app that produces more diagnostic info for their engineering efforts. I recommend you request that app and submit logs.

I have this test version of the app installed and waiting to reproduce the issue myself.