Bluetooth Inspector

Fixes:
• Fix a missing animation when navigating to a peripheral on a compact display and make navigation more reliable.

Fixes:
• Fix a missing animation when navigating to a peripheral on a compact display and fix navigating between services and characteristics in split view.

Features:
• Background Scanning: Scan for peripherals in the background. Suggests suitable service IDs for scanning.
• Location: Count devices found per location. Show locations scanned on a map.
• Live Activity: Keep track of background scanning status outside the app. Supports Always-On display and Dynamic Island on iPhone 14 Pro.

Fixes:
• Improvements to layout and legibility of various parts of the app for users with an accessibility font size set.

Features:
• A new Hex option in the Write Value shortcut action lets you write a hex value to a characteristic from the Shortcuts app.
• Manually reload a characteristic value with the reload button above the characteristic value history.
• 5 battery icons are now used for more granularity in battery level.

Fixes:
• Make sure the peripheral is in the expected state before trying to write to a characteristic of it.

Features:
• Continuing with the backend performance improvements last version, this version improves the frontend UI performance. Swift Concurrency and refactoring of frontend and backend interaction code has enabled a better separation between the two.

Fixes:
• When first receiving a value for a characteristic, don't try to read the same value again unprompted.

Features:
• A new shortcut action, ‘Write Value’ will write a value to a characteristic on a peripheral. Strings and numerics can be written to any writable characteristic discovered from interrogation on scanned peripherals.

Features:
• Cancel a ‘disconnect all’ action and show when completed.
• Set scanning mode and see more information about peripherals in the App Clip.

Fixes:
• Improve support for iOS 14, reducing crashes and improving layout.

Features:
• Display ANCS authorisation: Detect and display if devices have Apple Notification Center Service access to your notifications.
• Better detect device disconnection: Detect situations where the peripheral you're interrogating disconnects from you, including during the initial interrogation process and while waiting for a response to a message you sent.

Fixes:
• Sometimes the initial information obtained through advertisement data would incorrectly take priority over the results of interrogation, leading to empty services. This has been resolved.

Bluetooth Inspector now understands advertisement data!

• Gather and present advertisement data from devices as they are discovered.
• Preload services when present in advertisement.
• Show timestamp advertised by device when discovered.
• Use MAC address in advertisement for manufacturer detection.

More Features:
• Characteristic descriptors. Descriptor information is now displayed alongside characteristic values if descriptors are present in the received information about a device.
• Detect when not ready to receive messages. Sometimes devices are not ready to receive the next message as they're still processing the previous one. Bluetooth Inspector is now able to detect this situation and let you know that your next message might be missed by the device. You're still welcome to try sending a message though!
• Status of attempted writes. Alongside the history of received values, Bluetooth Inspector now keeps a list of attempted writes with the status of each. Observe the queue messages and watch as they are processed by the recipient device.
• Support writes without response. Some characteristics don't provide the ability to acknowledge receipt of your sent messages. Bluetooth Inspector now supports the ability to send messages without acknowledgement, which may also increase the amount of bytes that can be sent in the message.
• Copy all the things from all the places. Device information, as originally received from the device or as decoded by Bluetooth Inspector. All the IDs and UUIDs for peripherals, services and characteristics. Values and the history of them. Context menus everywhere.

Features:
• Shortcut actions automate scanning and interrogation, enumerating services and characteristics, and reading values.

Features:
• Filter by event circumstance in the session log.
• Awareness of 8 more Apple device characteristics.

Fixes:
• Fix UUIDs showing instead of known characteristic and service names, and these showing in the wrong size or with the wrong background.

Features:
• Log found peripherals, services, characteristics and values. Export a .log file of timestamped events.

Features:
• Add awareness of 46 new services, 97 new characteristics, 113 new characteristic descriptions, and 297 new companies producing Bluetooth peripherals.

Features:
• Design your own peripheral rows with the information you desire at the forefront. Choose to include components like make and signal strength, then rearrange and adjust text sizes for your own needs.

Fixes:
• Improvements to the entry of new values for characteristics, including fixes to some race conditions causing crashes and a clear ‘done’ button for dismissing the keyboard.

Features:
• Redesigned options menu to be consistent across all platforms, making it easier to access and change settings.

Bluetooth Inspector is now available on Apple TV!

Fixes:
• Correct list styles for compact layouts (iOS and slide over iPadOS).

Fixes:
• If we're in auto-interrogate mode, disconnecting from a peripheral had no effect since the connection will be re-established immediately. Now manually disconnecting will remove the peripheral from participation in automatic interrogation until manually connected.

Further:
• More help text has been added to the options describing how interrogation works. Have a read from the options menu by choosing the question mark under interrogation options.

Features:
• ‘Disconnect all’ option in the menu to disconnect from all peripherals currently being interrogated.
• ‘Automatic interrogation’ toggle in the menu to choose to manually interrogate peripherals rather than automatically asking all found peripherals for information.

Fixes:
• A previous update made the app try harder to disconnect from peripherals that refused to end the interrogation session when the app was backgrounded. Unfortunately the app tried so hard, it was too exhausted to try again the next time the app was foregrounded. This is now resolved and the determined app will continue to try aborting an interrogation regardless of the session being resumed.
• The launch screen no longer uses the light version when in dark mode. Also other minor dark mode colour tweaks to make colours easier to distinguish in dark mode.

Features:
• Refresh UI for peripheral highlights: device information, signal strength and battery.
• Identify late-2020 Apple devices (e.g. iPhone 12).
• Add toggle for automatic interrogation from options menu alongside automatic scanning.

Fixes:
• Performance improvements to various parts of the UI by only refreshing changed content.
• More reliable stack navigation on narrow displays (portrait iPhone and slide over iPad).

• Separate section for connected devices from named devices and unknown devices to make it easier to find your own devices and devices with information available to the app.
• More reliably determine when a peripheral has changed. The hashes provided by the Bluetooth API does not change when the services, characteristics or values provided by the peripheral change. Manually calculating a hash of the peripheral should hopefully resolve issues around the app crashing when attempting to interact with a peripheral in a manner which the peripheral can no longer support, for example by reading a value for a characteristic that is no longer available.

• Improve performance by consolidating connection and interrogation attempts.
• Try harder to disconnect from peripherals when stopping scanning.