Apple Watch and AirPods

[Howard2k]

I picked up a pair of AirPods (v2) and to be honest I didn't do a mass of research before buying. It's entirely possible that my expectations are just too high, or perhaps they're not working properly.

I was hoping to be able to use these on both my iPhone and Watch, and to be able to switch audio from one to the other with relative ease.

Playing music from my phone? It would be great to be able to direct this to the AirPods.
Same with playing music from my watch. I'd like to be able to play that to the AirPods too (I understand not at the same time).

Instead it seems I have to mess around with turning BT on and off and paring, unpairing, re-pairing ALL the time.

AirPods v2
iPhone 8+ with iOS 14.4.2
Watch SE with Watch OS 7.3.3

Are my expectations unreasonable? Should I need to manually mess around with BT on my phone and watch in order to direct audio from phone or watch to the AirPods? Did I totally get sucked into Apple's smooth marketing (and again, I did not do much research myself, could be totally my fault).

What is working well?

The AirPods integration with iPhone seems to be pretty good. Ear detection is working. I can have music playing through the phone speaker and the put the AirPods into my ears and it switches over. Super cool. The AirPods + iPhone experience seems pretty good.


But if I open the music app on my Watch, I get the Connection Failed message (make sure they're turned on and in range).

I've reset all three devices (phone, watch, AirPods).

Any ideas?



EDIT: According to Apple, I should see this on my phone. I don't:
If you want to turn automatic switching off for an iPhone or iPad, go to Settings > Bluetooth on that device with your AirPods in your ears. Tap the info button

next to your AirPods in the list of devices. Tap Connect to This iPhone [or iPad], and then tap When Last Connected to This iPhone [or iPad]. To turn this feature on again, tap Automatically.

 

[coffeeplease]

I can play music from my watch and it'll open up the audio output and automatically connect to my AirPods. Switching back to iPhone just requires me to open the audio output on the phone and select AirPods. Don't need to go into bluetooth settings ever. It sounds like something is not right with your setup.

 

[Howard2k]

Thanks. Good to know it can work, somehow. I'll keep messing with it. Thanks.

 

[NastyMatt]

I actually turned off 'When last connected' option as I would be using headphones on my iPhone and one of my kids would play something on my iPad and my headphones would auto connect to that! So I manually connect on all devices - very easy to do from lock screens (audio options).

With 4 devices I use my headphones on auto connecting wasn't as clever as I'd hoped it would be.