Force iPhone to stay connected to AirPort Express?

[Uplift]

I recently got myself an AirPort Express to stream audio through my speakers. However it seems anytime i disconnect from the AirPort either by going out of range or switching off the AirPort, the source on the iPhone ALWAYS reverts back to the internal speakers. Meaning every single time I want to use the AirPort I must manually select the source.. it's annoying. Is this normal?

In my car, when my phone connects to my head unit with bluetooth the music automatically switched to my car speakers. But this is bluetooth and the Airport connects with Wifi.

 

[xraydoc]

I recently got myself an AirPort Express to stream audio through my speakers. However it seems anytime i disconnect from the AirPort either by going out of range or switching off the AirPort, the source on the iPhone ALWAYS reverts back to the internal speakers. Meaning every single time I want to use the AirPort I must manually select the source.. it's annoying. Is this normal?

In my car, when my phone connects to my head unit with bluetooth the music automatically switched to my car speakers. But this is bluetooth and the Airport connects with Wifi.

It's normal behavior.

I can only assume it's because Apple assumes you'll always want to connect to your car, but you won't necessarily always want to connect to remote Airplay speakers continuously, since all sounds (text, keyboard clicks, email, etc) would run through it.

Plus, Airplay is shared with anyone on your wifi network while BT tends to be on a single-device basis (many cars & devices will pair to one phone at a time or must be disconnected from one before it'll connect to another).

Unfortunately I don't know of a way to force it to connect through wifi Airplay speakers as a default audio device.

 

[Uplift]

It's normal behavior.

I can only assume it's because Apple assumes you'll always want to connect to your car, but you won't necessarily always want to connect to remote Airplay speakers continuously, since all sounds (text, keyboard clicks, email, etc) would run through it.

Plus, Airplay is shared with anyone on your wifi network while BT tends to be on a single-device basis (many cars & devices will pair to one phone at a time or must be disconnected from one before it'll connect to another).

Unfortunately I don't know of a way to force it to connect through wifi Airplay speakers as a default audio device.

Ah well, I guess I just expected it because my car connects automatically.

 

[Brian33]

Are you are streaming music to the Airport Express? I do this often but use Apple's "Remote" app on the iPhone/iPod Touch instead of the Music app. It's different but maybe could work for you depending upon your setup. If you need other iPhone audio it won't help, though.

To use Remote you have to have iTunes open on a computer in your WiFi network. The Remote app just tells the iTunes to send audio output to the Airplay speakers that you pick in the app. Since the speaker setting is really in iTunes on a computer, shutting the phone down completely will not interrupt the audio. (Not sure about shutting down the Airport Express itself; why would one do that, I wonder?)

The computer running iTunes can be a Mac or Windows machine, and, at least on a Mac, it can be in sleep mode. Remote will cause the Mac to wake up to make iTunes available.

This works great for me because I have my whole music library on my Mac Mini and can play it in up to four rooms (and counting!) simultaneously.

Remote app works well, but one annoyance is you can't check the lyrics even if they are stored correctly in the iTunes library.