How to stop iPhone from switching Bluetooth devices

Jwargo wrote:

When your customers are pointing out an annoying issue to them, why do you choose to pass the buck instead of addressing it?

add a switch you can swipe on that disables this “switch to whatever new device is nearby “mode.

instead of, you tell your customers to delete all the other devices you dont want it to switch to ( Not an option)

Who do you think is reading your post? It's not Apple, just us, your fellow users. If you want Apple to know your thoughts, you can tell them here:

Product Feedback - Apple

This is absolutely maddening. Its fine if the devices autoconnect, that is often what I want.

What I absolutely never want is for it to break my current bluetooth connection to replace it with something else.

Namely I am on my earbuds and that connection gets ripped away and put in my wife's car. Its fine to connect to her car, we want that often. But never break an existing connection to put it there. What the heck it that? Why is that a default feature, let alone one that cannot be changed?

If your iPhone is auto switching to another device, which you don't want it to switch to, there is no reason to leave the other device powered on and within range of your iPhone. That's a pretty simple solution.

Right, because if I don't want my phone auto switching to my car it absolutely makes sense to just... umm... turn off my car. What an easy solution. /s 🤦‍♂️🙄

When I have a call going on my noise-isolating headset and need to leave the house, the last thing I want is for it to transfer to the lower quality car microphone that picks up all the background noise. The person on the other end of the call always notices. It's disruptive. If I want to listen to music on the car speaker system later I can choose to connect to that at that time. Apple choosing which device to use for me, and not allowing me any way to override that, is asinine and a fundamental failure of UX design. I shouldn't have to unpair my car every time I park just to be able to get in the car next time, start driving, and keep my call going without interruption.

And it does this constantly with any other Bluetooth products I use. I have to “forget” the item every time. For me the issue is one step worse too because I used to be able to listen to phone calls through the phone speaker but it won’t connect my phone, only if I’m listening to music or podcasts and then it connects randomly to random products when I don’t want it to do so. Ridiculousness is what we are being given at this point

I switched to iPhone about a year ago because you hear great things about iPhone, this issue is soo annoying as I’m a truck driver and when answering a call the phone decides what device to connect to, now this could be CarPlay which is what I want or it could be my phones little speaker or satnav or my watch. Turning off all Bluetooth devices that’s aren’t being used isn’t an option as satnav uses Bluetooth for live traffic updates. This issue just spoils iPhone and I wouldn’t have another once my renewal comes around as I’ll be going back to android.

This is such a pain. Was sitting on a work call using my BT speaker, my kids turned on another speaker downstairs and the iPhone just switched to that one? In what world is that useful behaviour?

Okay but for a lot of us, you guys (Apple) ARE the manufacturer. So what do we do when? We don't want to have to keep disconnecting & connecting devices.

Find out from your dealership how to turn off the system in the car. I really find it hard to believe that it should stay on all the time, potentially draining the battery.

Yes! This.

Have you tried answering the question at hand

Responding to Lobsterghost1; Have done the tap to wake turned off and it still wants to switch to iPhone audio not even speaker and it is a random issue am first responder and need the iPhone permanently in Bluetooth or less efficiently; speaker !

Yup similar issues I’m facing where the earbuds audio gets switched to my smart watch audio. No option to deselect smartwatch audio. Kept it in others as device type for smartwatch and ear buds as headphone. Still the same issue. No solution till date

n2666s wrote:

Need Bluetooth on ALWAYS!; am not playing games it can be life or death and have surgeons; trauma center; anesthesia when am up to my elbows......,I need and other caregivers NEED THE IDIOTIC I PHONE OPTION TOTALLY TURNED OFF!! And cannot use iPhone earbuds or earbuds of any kind because of the possibility they might fall into patients open wounds.......self explanatory

I didn't suggest you turn off Bluetooth. I suggested that you turn off the devices you don't want the phone to connect to... self-explanatory.

Turning them off does not work for me at all, because it keeps connecting to my car. My car is turned off and in the garage. THIS JUST STARTED AFTER LAST UPDATE. Has not been an issue since bluetooth was invented, never not once. I'm playing music in my huge house 100 feet from my car, and it WILL NOT stop connecting to my car. The bose speaker is higher on the list. I have turned off/on bluetooth. Literally cannot play music inside my house since the update unless I'm willing to FORGET my jaguar device. Which means I have to go thru the process to RE-PAIR the car every time I get in.

Completely agree that this is one of the most annoying issues and should be VERY easy to fix! I am on a work call and my wife just started her car and my phone switched to the bluetooth in her car. It is actually laughable that you cannot select for each bluetooth device which ones that you want to auto-connect and which ones you want to enable manually. I shouldn't have to "Forget This Device" each time I am done using it for a period of time.