[SOLVED] iPhone Bluetooth Audio Cutting Out Randomly — Caused by App Auto-Connecting to Nearby Devices

Hi all,

I’m posting this to help anyone experiencing intermittent Bluetooth audio issues on their iPhone. This took me months to figure out, and I wanted to document it in case someone else is troubleshooting the same problem.

Issue I was Having

While walking around my neighborhood and listening to audio through Bluetooth headphones, the audio would randomly cut out for ~10 seconds, then come back in as if nothing had happened. The media would not pause, the device wouldn’t show a disconnection — it was just silence, then normal playback again.

This issue happened across multiple sets of Bluetooth headphones, and all of those headphones worked perfectly on other devices like my iPad, Mac, and older iPhone 11.

I reset my iPhone to default settings and re-paired all Bluetooth devices. I even tested the same headphones on a clean install of iOS. None of these steps fixed the issue.

What I Discovered

After a lot of trial and error, I found that my iPhone was automatically connecting to Amazon Echo and Echo Dot devices in nearby homes as I walked around. These connections would appear in Settings > Bluetooth with a status of “Connected,” but without the usual “i” (information) icon next to them (see below photo). Other forums that I read told me this is a sign that an app on the phone, not the system itself, is initiating the connection.

To test further, I went through my apps and turned off Bluetooth permissions for each one. After lots of testing, I confirmed that the Renpho Health app (used with a Renpho Smart Scale) was the cause.

Even with these settings turned off in the Renpho app:

• Auto-detect nearby devices
• Auto-measurement
• Bluetooth anomaly detection passing

The app was still auto-connecting to smart devices like Amazon Echo, all of which I had never paired with. This was causing the audio interruptions on my headphones. I installed the app on my older iPhone 11 and started experiencing the same issue there, which confirmed the source.

How I Fixed It

1. Go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Bluetooth
2. Turn off Bluetooth permissions for all apps
3. Then, turn them back on one at a time, testing after each to see when the problem returns
4. Once I turned off Bluetooth for the Renpho Health app, the issue completely disappeared
5. I’ve since switched to a different smart scale to avoid this altogether

Things I Tried That Never Worked

• Turning the phone off and on
• Resetting network settings
• Re-pairing Bluetooth headphones
• Turning off Wi-Fi, Handoff, and AirPlay
• Performing a full factory reset

None of those resolved the issue. Only disabling Bluetooth permissions for the Renpho app fixed the problem.

I’ve reported this issue to Renpho as well, since their app appears to be ignoring its own settings regarding automatic device detection.

Hope this helps someone out there.

[Edited by Moderator]