My iPhone is obsessed with my AirPods, and my AirPods are possessed

[mj_]

I'm having serious issues with using my AirPods on devices other than my iPhone. I have an iPhone XS Max, an Apple Watch Series 3, an iMac and a MacBook Air, all of which I use my AirPods with more or less regularly. However, about once a week my AirPods refuse to disconnect from my iPhone and connect to another device. They will simply remain connected to the iPhone until I put it in Airplane mode. Then and only then am I able to connect them to another device, although I always have to go to Bluetooth settings and manually connect them to the device in question. The other problem I have regularly is that my iPhone randomly decides to take over, or rather my AirPods randomly decide that now, right now this very moment while I am having a conversation with someone using my iMac or MacBook Air via Teams, FaceTime, etc., would be a brilliant time to disconnect from the active device and connect to the iPhone. I even changed my iPhone's setting to "Only connect when last connected" but that doesn't keep it from hogging them and regularly taking over mid-sentence.

The other thing I noticed is that they seem to be possessed. Sometimes when listening to a podcast on either my iPhone or my Apple Watch they will just randomly pause playback without me touching them or the playback device. And very rarely they will resume playback by themselves after I take them out of my ears and put them in my pockets.

Is this normal? I feel like both issues could be software-related but since I've only had them for a couple of months I honestly don't know.

 

[perezr10]

I hate how Apple gives the iPhone priority with the AirPods. I use my Apple Watch as my main podcast/music player and I also run into the same problem. Sometimes my AirPods are stuck to my iPhone.

 

[nickdalzell1]

Precisely why I keep two sets, my Gen-2's and Pros. There have been a few instances where my Pros won't connect to my Apple Watch to play music on the watch and fail to connect if I try using AirPlay to change the output device. Pop in my Gen 2's, and they work since the last device they connected to was my iPad and the iPad doesn't go to work with me.

After iOS 14 (and WatchOS 7) that issue seems resolved. Only issue now is that sometimes you don't get the 'bling!' noise indicating paired successfully when you put them in your ears, but wake the iPhone and it connects fine. It's like the iPhone's Bluetooth goes to 'sleep' after a bit.