Change Notification: Nimble to Replace Bluedroid.

[rftafas]

Hello!

Bluedroid will be replaced by Nimble on the Arduino Core for ESP32. More specifically, we will be adopting ESP_NIMBLE, present in ESP-IDF. This change initially doesn't affect the Arduino Component for ESP32. The adoption of Nimble will follow the stages below.

Stage 1: Moving towards Nimble for all Devices, except ESP32

Bluedroid will be replaced by Nimble on the Arduino core for ESP32 for all devices except ESP32 by the release of v3.3, on 30/07/2025, according to the Release Roadmap. Benefits are lower memory footprint, updated library and etc. Affected users have about 4 months to prepare.

Impact:

• This action should not bring any breaking change on any application using our devices on usual configurations.
• This change may impact third party libraries and tools.

Mitigation

• It is recommended that third party libraries and tools adapt to this change.

Stage 2: Moving to Nimble on ESP32

In Version 4.0 (to be released in 25/03/2026), even ESP32 will move from Bluedroid to Nimble. This is a breaking change only for standard ESP32.

Impact:

• BT Classic will no longer be supported on Arduino Core for ESP32. That includes BT-Serial and other BT-Classic dependent applications/libraries.
• This change may impact third party libraries and tools. It should not impact those already adapted in stage 1.

Mitigation

• BT Classic and Bluedroid will still be available on the Arduino Component for ESP-IDF. Users must adopt it in order to keep BT Classic support.
• It is again recommended that third party libraries and tools adapt to this change.
• Build a derivative Arduino Core for ESP32, with the Library Builder

Q&A

• Discord and GH (issues & discussions) for more information, migration issues and doubts.

[ReginaldSourn]

should remove it a long time ago. That makes it less confusing for new developers in Bluetooth tech.

[pschatzmann]

This is quite a bummer:

No more

• HID (mouse, keyboard, ..)
• A2DP (bluetooth speaker, audio source for bluetooth speakers)
• Bluetooth Serial

Why don't you just make the USB Stack selectable in the Arduino Tools menu ? This way you can even hide it on the ESP32 varients that do not support Bluetooth Classic

[me-no-dev]

because this will be very hard to do and maintain. It would be very easy for you to roll out your own libs with bluedroid through lib-builder if you need to, or use Arduino as IDF component also. BTW HID over BLE will be possible with NimBLE

[SamHalvoe]

Will there be a menuconfig or some other simple way to build the arduino-esp32 libs with bluedroid with the lib-builder?

[me-no-dev]

There is. Read this page: https://docs.espressif.com/projects/arduino-esp32/en/latest/lib_builder.html

[pschatzmann]

Sorry, but from my point of view that is way too complicated and finicky.

Can you plan at least plan for an option to deactivate the new bluetooth stack so that we have the chance to use some Arduino libraries for some alternative stacks (e.g. blue kitchen) w/o the risk to run into conflicts.