LightBlue® — Bluetooth LE

Punch Through Design

About this app

LightBlue® by Punch Through®
Your ultimate BLE debugging and development toolkit. Trusted by BLE developers and engineers since 2012 to scan, inspect, and troubleshoot Bluetooth Low Energy devices with precision.

Scan For Peripherals
 Discover, connect, and interact with nearby BLE devices. Quickly view advertising peripherals, sort by signal strength (RSSI), and connect with a single tap. Once connected, explore the device's advertisement data, services, and characteristics.

Isolate SDK Issues
 Simplify debugging by pinpointing issues in your BLE SDKs. LightBlue lets you isolate your app's business logic and focus on core tasks like connecting, scanning, reading, writing, and receiving notifications, built on years of BLE development experience and platform best practices.

Mimic Your Devices
 Prototype your application by creating virtual BLE peripherals. Build a profile from scratch or clone an advertising peripheral to mimic your product's functionality, even before your own firmware is ready.

Key features:

- Scan and discover BLE peripherals nearby
- Browse services and characteristics in detail
- Read, write, and subscribe to notifications and indications
- Send data from notifications to AWS IoT or Adafruit IO via Cloud Connect
- Write to characteristics in Hex, Octal, Binary, Decimal, or ASCII
- Clone peripheral profiles or build your own from scratch
- Advertise as a custom peripheral to simulate your device
- Thoroughly log and share BLE events
- Available on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Android

LightBlue started in 2012 as an internal tool. Punch Through built it to test and debug BLE devices while working on client projects. It worked well, so we shared it with the community. We've kept it free ever since. Today, LightBlue is used by solo developers and engineering teams alike, including inside some of the world's most respected tech and device companies.

Ratings and reviews

This was the only app that could detect my wife's QALO smart ring. We used the built-in decibel meter to walk around the house until the signal got stronger. It led us to the bathroom, and within a minute we found the ring on the ground between the counter and toilet. Hands down, this was the best free app we tried. I almost never write reviews, but this app absolutely earned one. Highly recommended.

did not detect missing unpaired bluetooth, glitch in full blue bars with score of 0 with no info on the device and signal didnt change, restarted devices twice with no change, sloooww to change signal strength when moving around

A very nice tool to use when you're having problems with Bluetooth. The makers of an OBD2 bluetooth device suggested that I use it to debug my issue. It's spot on and fantastic!

What’s new

Added a new feature to advertise a specific service of a virtual device.
Added support for local "Nicknames" for a Characteristic/Service.
Expanded support for filters by adding more categories.
Minor bug fixes