PerliBlue: Bluetooth Scanner

PerliBlue is a Bluetooth scanner for people who want to know what is actually in the air around them. It lists every Low Energy and Classic device it can hear, decodes the raw advertisement byte by byte, walks the GATT tree and helps you find what you have lost. Scanning needs no network, no account and no sign-in.

THE SCAN LIST
• Bluetooth Low Energy and Classic (BR/EDR inquiry) together in one live list
• Every row: the name or "(no name)", the address and its type, a signal badge, an estimated distance and zone, a sparkline, the company behind the address, and a chip for anything decoded
• Sort by signal strength, distance, name, last seen, first seen or packet rate
• Filter by name, minimum signal, LE or Classic, connectable, named devices, favourites, company, service UUID or beacon type
• Devices that go quiet dim instead of disappearing, so you can still open one

WHAT IS IN THE ADVERTISEMENT
• Every advertising structure parsed and named, with the raw hex there to copy
• Beacon formats: iBeacon, Eddystone and AltBeacon
• Sensor and vendor payloads: BTHome, Ruuvi, Xiaomi, ATC, Govee, Apple, Microsoft, Google Fast Pair and Exposure Notification
• Distinct frames kept apart, so a device that alternates payloads shows both
• Service UUIDs, appearance values and company ids resolved against the Bluetooth SIG assigned numbers

GATT EXPLORER
• Connect, see the negotiated MTU, and walk the service and characteristic tree with SIG names
• Read, and write as hex, text or an 8, 16 or 32-bit number, with or without response
• Subscribe to notifications and watch them arrive in a live log
• Descriptors decoded too, including presentation format and valid range
• Known characteristics decoded: battery level, device information, heart rate, temperature and more

FIND IT AGAIN
• A full-screen proximity view: a ring, a smoothed distance and a warmer or colder trend
• Beeps and haptics that quicken as you get closer, and a mute for when they do not help
• Star a device to keep it in Favourites with your own name, note and colour
• Presence shows whether a favourite is in range or how long it has been away, and alerts you when one arrives

TOOLS AND EXPORT
• Adapter details, the paired-device list, and a UUID and company lookup
• A session recorder that logs every packet, keeping past sessions to export later
• Export the scan list or one device as CSV or JSON, a signal history as CSV and a recording as JSONL, and share any of them
• Turn the phone into a test iBeacon to check a decoder against something you control
• Keep scanning with the screen off for a long capture

TUNE IT
• Distance is estimated from signal strength: set the reference power, the path-loss exponent and the smoothing, or calibrate from a metre away
• Metres or feet, light or dark, scan mode, legacy-only advertising, all PHYs including long range, per-packet reporting and scan on launch

WHY IT ASKS FOR LOCATION
Android counts Bluetooth beacon frames as a location signal, so an app that promises never to use Bluetooth for location has iBeacon and Eddystone stripped out of its results. Showing them is the point of this app, so it asks for the location permission instead, and never reads your position or collects any location.

ADVERTS
• A Google AdMob banner in Settings, and now and then a full-screen ad after an export, pay for the free app. Nothing interrupts a scan and no scan result reaches an advertiser.

PRIVACY
• Nothing you scan is uploaded, and nothing about the devices around you leaves the phone
• There is no account, no sign-in and no sync
• What you scan, star, record and export stays on the device until you share it yourself
• Counting which features you use is off by default, and the counts stay on the device

There is a Linux desktop version too.

PerliBlue is made by Perlicom Systems Ltd in Ireland.
Privacy policy: https://perlicom.com/perliblue/privacy
Terms: https://perlicom.com/perliblue/terms
Support: [email protected]