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Harry in Port Huron, Michigan listens on AM800 CKLW - "The Information Station" and asked: "I've got a 4G Moto Z3 and when I try to pair it up to the Bluetooth keyboard, I've got bluetooth on and I've got the bluetooth keyboard on, it says "searching for device" and it never finds it. I can't get the phone paired up to a bluetooth keyboard and I'd like to use it with a bluetooth keyboard. Any of you know how to make this happen?"

http://www.intotomorrow.com/media/podcasts/2019/05-17-2019/05-17-2019-H1S1.mp3

Harry, odds are you won’t be able to make this happen.

Bluetooth uses different profiles, the most common profile on phone A2DP, or Advanced Audio Distribution Profile, which allows the phones to output audio to your favorite earbuds and bluetooth speakers.

Mice and Keyboards use a different profile that some phones and tablets do support called HID, or Human Interface Device. We haven’t found any mention anywhere of the Motorola Moto Z3 supporting it.

We have found some details about what the phone supports and HID wasn’t included but that’s always trickier to judge, since no lists ever say “we explicitly don’t support X” so sometimes some things are just excluded, but the fact that we haven’t seen HID mentioned anywhere coupled with the fact that your phone cannot find your keyboard makes it very likely that the phones just can’t use it.

Generally speaking, modern devices try to make things as simple as possible for users, so if a bluetooth devices doesn’t show up it’s usually because they phone doesn’t know what to do with it, and that’s probably the case with your Moto Z3 and your keyboard.

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