AirPods disconnecting from calls after a few minutes

I have been dealing with this issue reported by many others and I have not found a solution to it until I figured something out today, so I’m posting this to help other folks suffering from that problem.

The Problem:

The issue is that the AirPods appear to disconnect from Bluetooth in the middle of a call after just a few minutes.

min order to reconnect, put them back in the case and back to your ears right away and they will work again until the same issue happens again a few minutes later.

The Solution:

After having the same issue (AirPods disconnecting after a few minutes from calls), I realized that my issue was ONLY happening when the microphone from my AirPods was active (FaceTime, Zoom, WebEx). But when I was listening to music or a TV show on Apple TV, I was staying connected until the battery died.

That led me to think it has something to do with the mic in the AirPods.

Note: I took them to Apple and they ran diagnostics and didn’t find any HW defect and the AirPods were up to date with the firmware.

Back to the mic. There is a setting in the Bluetooth settings of your AirPods that lets you set the microphone of your device on the left, right or “auto”. By default it’s on auto.

So, I ran a test on a dummy conf call and set my mic on the left AirPod. It never disconnected.

Then I switched it to the right AirPod and it immediately disconnected.

I then did the same thing from right to left and same behavior.

So, now, as a workaround, I just set the mic on one of the AirPods (I do not use auto), and the disconnect issue disappeared.

Apple still has to figure out why switching the mic from one AP to the other causes the disconnect (I contacted them and will jump on a call with them to discuss tomorrow), but at least I can use my AP again in meetings!

I hope that helps other folks here with that issue!

Ben.