AirPods and device switching on iOS 14

By alexr, 24 September, 2020

Forum
Apple Hardware and Compatible Accessories

Hello to all,

One of the most expected features for me in ios 14 was the automatic switching of airpods between different devices.
I have tried this and sadly discovered that if I am on the Iphone and I start using with Voiceover the Ipad, the sound does not change on my airpods.

Has anyone tried it?

Thank you,
Alex

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Comments

By Serena on Tuesday, September 22, 2020 - 18:23

Hi, it will only switch when you actually play some media of some type. IE music, audio book, movie, and so on. this is a little annoying, but i can see why they have done this. otherwise every time your device even woke up it could interrupt the other device mid flow. also, it won't work until your device is unlocked. so for example, if you are on your phone, and lock that, and go to your iPad, and unlock it and play audio, even for a second, it will switch over.

By Eileen on Tuesday, September 22, 2020 - 18:23

Triggering Siri should also switch audio.

Something else that currently has me grumbling, is my Apple Watch claiming my AirPods when it's hourly and half-hourly chime goes off. I suspect I'll soon be disabling these chimes... a little disappointing, as I like them, but the Apple Watch grabbing the audio whilst I'm in the middle of something on my iPhone is quickly becoming annoying.

By JC on Tuesday, September 22, 2020 - 18:23

Like everyone else has stated, it’ll only work if music or other type of audio is playing, and when unlocked. I like the auto switching feature.

By Jeff on Tuesday, September 22, 2020 - 18:23

I don't like the autoswitching feature because I have no use for it and it caused problems when my wife's iPad grabbed my airPods from my phone. Fortunately, with Apple Accessibility's help, I learned how to disable this feature.

By Kerry Fielding on Thursday, October 22, 2020 - 18:23

Hi. I’m anxious to upgrade to take advantage of this feature. I have an iPhone, a MacBook Pro, and Apple TV 4K. Frankly, switching between them has been nothing but a pain in the neck and never worked very well for me. I’m hoping that with the introduction of the auto switch feature, things will work much better. However, given people were having issues with focus jumping, I’m very reluctant to upgrade to iOS 14, and my AirPods firmware won’t upgrade until I do.

By Greg Wocher on Thursday, October 22, 2020 - 18:23

Hello,
I have upgraded and this feature does not work well for me. When switching from my iPhone to my iPad, I have to play something like mudic to get it tow switch. Just using voiceover does not make it switch for some reason. I can never get it to switch automatically to my mac. I am hoping its just a setting on my mac.

By Eileen on Thursday, October 22, 2020 - 18:23

In reply to by Greg Wocher

My understanding is that support for auto-switching is tied to the release of iOS 14, iPadOS 14, macOS Big Sur, and watchOS 7. So, it's not supported on Mac yet unless you are running the Big Sur beta.

By alexr on Thursday, October 22, 2020 - 18:23

Thanks for all of your replies.

Do you know any way of fast change of airpods with voiceover?

Sometimes i need to take a note with my ipad but the airpods are working with my iphone and it's not fast to change.

Thanks for your help and sorry for my english, I'm trying to learn.

By Larry on Tuesday, December 22, 2020 - 18:23

I also had high hopes for this feature, but since it does not work as I want I created a quick device-switching shortcut.

I am feeling lazy so I hope you can follow this quick description.

1, Launch shortcuts and go into Gallery.
2, Search for the Play Apple Music playlist shortcut.
3, follow the instructions and choose a playlist. (If you dont have Apple Music, buy a song on iTunes and create a playlist with that song)
4, Find your newly created shortcut and enter ”Edit mode”
5, Using the search type ”Pause” and tap the ”Play/Pause option.
6, press ”Done”.

On my iPhone I chose this shortcut as my Backtap tripple click and on my iPad I created an icon on the home screen for it. When I activate the shortcut the device thinks a song will start so the Airpods switch device, but since I added the pause-action as well the song will not actually start playing.

This is not a perfect solution, but it is a working one :p