BLE Pairing through App vs Device Settings

[acalpitojr]

I have been searching around, and it seems BLE devices need to be paired through their app on phones, as opposed to discovering and pairing through the phones settings menu.

Can anyone explain why we cannot pair a BLE device through a phones settings, then open up an app that will be using the BLE device?

[run_ar]

This depends on what phone you are using. On Android i think you can discover and pair with most peripherals in the Bluetooth device menu. However, on iOS you will only see devices that is natively supported by iOS, e.g. HID, HRM, ANCS etc. So if you have another device you would have to connect from the app (pairing is handled by core bluetooth), note that I don't see the problem in this approach as you would anyway need an application to use services not supported by the OS.

[Aleksander Nowakowski]

On iOS, on the other hand, as Runar wrote, the only way to bond with a device is by trying to read or write a secured characteristic or descriptor. iOS API allows apps to retrieve connected devices, but no bonded devices. I don't know how the gatt server behaves there.