While in my car and using my AirPods the phone or AirPods will drop the connection to the AirPods and connect to the car BT system. Once that happens i cant use the AirPods until I put them back in the case. How do I stop this from happening short of unpairing my phone from my car? Thanks.
iPhone 12 Pro
Karina, thank you for your response but that is not the issue. The AirPods are not switching to another device. They are disconnecting completely from the iPhone and the iPhone is then being connected to my car Bluetooth. So, while I am driving with my AirPods in my ears and speaking with someone, all of a sudden, the phone disconnects from the AirPods and gets connects to the car. After that happens, I cannot reconnect with the AirPods for that call either through the speaker icon on the phone call page or via the control panel. I am trying to stop that behavior from occurring. I hope that makes sense.
I am honestly not sure if this is an AirPods problem or an iPhone problem. But for whatever reason, the phone is giving priority to the car BT instead of the AirPods. I could unpair the iPhone and my car BT but then I lose my ability to stream music and podcasts via my car's BT sound system.
Hope this make sense.
Thanks.
Karina, thank you for your response but that is not the issue. The AirPods are not switching to another device. They are disconnecting completely from the iPhone and the iPhone is then being connected to my car Bluetooth. So, while I am driving with my AirPods in my ears and speaking with someone, all of a sudden, the phone disconnects from the AirPods and gets connects to the car. After that happens, I cannot reconnect with the AirPods for that call either through the speaker icon on the phone call page or via the control panel. I am trying to stop that behavior from occurring. I hope that makes sense.
I am honestly not sure if this is an AirPods problem or an iPhone problem. But for whatever reason, the phone is giving priority to the car BT instead of the AirPods. I could unpair the iPhone and my car BT but then I lose my ability to stream music and podcasts via my car's BT sound system.
Hope this make sense.
Thanks.
Thanks for getting back to us, Gator5000e!
We understand what you're saying now, thanks for the additional details too. It sounds like the vehicle connection is trying to automatically connect and is taking over when it is able. You may try going in to the Bluetooth setting for your vehicle and disabling the option for it to connect automatically. Of course that would make it so you'd have to connect it when you get in the vehicle, but it might stop it from continuously overriding your AirPods connection.
If that doesn't take care of it for you, you may try reaching out to Apple Support.
Let us know how it goes!
There is nothing like that in the BT settings on the iPhone that allows that. There is an option to tap on Disconnect but I am not sure what that would do. Is that a temp disconnection? Or is it a permanent disconnection? I am assuming it is not as final as the Forget This Device option.
My fear in using the Disconnect option is that I will forget to reconnect when I go to stream something and say a few choice words before I remember I disconnected the phone.
Also, if this does work, I will have to go into this option to Disconnect the car each time I want to use the AirPods to talk on the phone. I wonder if a Shortcut for this is available?
But I will give that a try and see what happens.
Thanks.
Hi Gator5000e,
Thank you for posting in the Apple Support Communities. It sounds like you'd like to disable automatic switching, correct? If so, we would love to help see if we can get the issue resolved for you. Let's go ahead and follow the steps we've provided for you below.
"To stop AirPods from automatically switching between devices, go to Settings > Bluetooth, tap the Actions Available button next to the name of your AirPods, tap Connect to This iPhone, then tap When Last Connected to This iPhone."
Switch AirPods between iPhone and other devices
Please let us know how it goes. We're always happy to help.
Cheers!
You're so very welcome, Gator5000e!
We were actually talking about the iPhone Bluetooth Settings, you can tap the info button next to your vehicle connection and see if there is an option to stop the automatic connection there.
Have a great day!
Thanks for the reply. I checked and my car doesn't have that kind of setting that I could find. But I will check again to see what I can find.
Thanks.
How to stop AirPods/iPhone from spontaneously switching to car BT
