How to stop Apple Watch from hijacking headphones?

[Anuba]

OK, so I have three of the W1 chip products - AirPods, beatsx and beats solo3, and I use them with my iPhone, my iPads and my ATV4s - never with the Apple Watch (series 1), other than for checking headphone battery levels and adjusting volume. No audio playback from the Watch, ever.

However, when I haven't played anything on the iPhone for a while but I'm still wearing the headphones, the Watch steps in and takes over and starts playing its damn notification binnnggggs through the headphones. And today it decided to take it to the next level: Hostile overtake. I was listening to streamed news on the iPhone in my AirPods, and lots of push notifications kept coming in b/c of major breaking news. Everytime this happened, the streamed radio cut out because the Watch stole the AirPods just to play me an assortment of BING! sounds. No clue why the radio stream was deemed less worthy of headphone love than some notification sounds.

Is there any way to block the Apple Watch from snatching the headphones away from the iPhone? It's 0% useful, 100% nuisance the way it works now. Just no solutions involving hammers, I plan to keep this Watch... I think.

 

[AlliFlowers]

I get this sporadically. No seeming rhyme or reason to it. But it never late.

 

[Phonephreak]

Never happened to me. Not sure why this would happen

 

[SoN1NjA]

Just started happening today to me

 

[Anuba]

Never happened to me. Not sure why this would happen

Well supposedly it's a feature. When the W1 products first came out, some people were disappointed that they don't automatically switch between devices (obviously because it would be extremely annoying; you're talking on your iPhone through AirPods and pick up your iPad to check something on the web, and the AirPods switch to the iPad? Ugh).

Apparently it was supposed to work like that, but was changed post-announcement: "With the release version, auto-switching still works with Apple Watch but not with iPad or Mac."

This one remnant of the auto-switching has to be the reason why the Watch sometimes snatches the headphones away from the iPhone for no apparent reason. More bug than feature if you ask me.

 

[QCassidy352]

I believe it's an advertised feature that the AirPods connect to both an iPhone and watch at the same time. So, functioning as intended. That said, it does seem like there should be a way to turn it off. That would annoy the heck out of me.