AirPod oddities when handing off between phone and watch

[riverfreak]

Ok.

Maybe my expectations are out of line. Generally, I expect that if I have my AirPods in and I start playing music from my watch that (minimally) the watch would ask where I want to play sound from and (ideally) would be intelligent enough to route through the connected AirPods.

Similarly, I would expect that if my AirPods came into proximity of my phone, and maybe I started listening there instead, they would intelligently shift. Or if a call came in or whatever.

That really doesn’t seem to be the case. In fact, trading off back and forth like this seems to really confuse some aspect of communication between the watch/phone/AirPods, badly enough to crash iOS11 and prior to reboot, totally kill the AirPods too.

So for starters: what are YOUR expectations of how seamless this whole dance of interactions should be? How does it work for you in your real world usage?

For me, when the AirPods work with the watch,it’s awesome. But there seem to be a lot of controlled conditions you want to avoid to keep things running smoothly.

 

[Zxxv]

work fine for me. Maybe im using them wrong but the I ask them to do something they do it.

 

[eastamherstbias]

Mine are moody. I use them between my laptop/appletv/phone/Apple Watch. They do get confused. They seem to be pretty rock solid on the laptop/appletv & Apple Watch. But starting a call on the phone after using them on another device seems to trip mine up. It is not the end of the world but a tad annoying.

 

[Cowmonk]

Mine became unpaired with everything the other day. It was truly weird.

I switch from watch music to phone music, half way into a song the music just paused and the headphones weren’t connected. I tried to reconnect using the Bluetooth menu on the phone but they weren’t listed.

I had to take them out my ears, stick them in the case, open and close it, and then I got the initial pairing screen again. Super weird. Seem to be working ok since between watch and phone.

 

[riverfreak]

Mine became unpaired with everything the other day. It was truly weird.

I switch from watch music to phone music, half way into a song the music just paused and the headphones weren’t connected. I tried to reconnect using the Bluetooth menu on the phone but they weren’t listed.

I had to take them out my ears, stick them in the case, open and close it, and then I got the initial pairing screen again. Super weird. Seem to be working ok since between watch and phone.

Same for me, except putting them back in the case did nothing. Couldn’t even disconnect/reconnect to them and had to reboot the AirPods and repair.

 

[TylerDurden130]

Similar question...

I know on the Watch you cannot fast-forward with now playing. Can I start the song on my phone, fast forward, hand off to watch? When I try this, on my watch I see Now Playing, but how can I have the watch take over?