Stop my iPhone from stealing Airpods from my Watch

G

giggles

macrumors 65816
Do any of you guys experience this:

1) You are in the same room with your iphone and watch. You’re wearing Airpods. You start some direct audio (like Apple’s own Podcast app) on the watch to listen to it without relying on the iPhone. You leave the iPhone in the room to charge and you leave the room.
2) You go around the house to do chores and stuff, while listening to the direct audio from the watch.
3) You happen to briefly reenter the original room where the iPhone is charging, and the moment the Airpods reenter the iPhone bluetooth range, the iPhone re-take ownnership of the Airpods, interrupting the audio you were listening to from the watch!

Am I crazy? Do you experience this too?
Isn’t this super annoying?
How is this still a thing?
This has been going on for years, I hoped that the new “automagical” Airpods handing over in iOS14 would stop this from happening..
 
giggles said:
3) You happen to briefly reenter the original room where the iPhone is charging, and the moment the Airpods reenter the iPhone bluetooth range, the iPhone re-take ownnership of the Airpods, interrupting the audio you were listening to from the watch!
Click to expand...

This has never happened to me. Why should it? If nothing is played on iPhone why should it take away AirPods from the watch?
And I listen to podcasts on my watch almost every morning while waking around garden.
 
I haven’t seen a report of this problem before. I will give it a go later on today and see if I experience the same.
 
I have been having a similar experience between iPhone and iPad. On a call on the phone, open the iPad to check something and the iPad grabs the AirPods, dropping the call back to the phone mic and speaker.

Presumably this is a mis-application of the auto switching capability in the latest version of all the software.
 
matrix07 said:
This has never happened to me. Why should it? If nothing is played on iPhone why should it take away AirPods from the watch?
And I listen to podcasts on my watch almost every morning while waking around garden.
Click to expand...
Maybe retake ownership is wrong wording, as it’s not like it then plays anything from the iPhone on the Airpods.

But this happened to me all the time, even (I wanna stress this out) before iOS14, both
- watch vs iphone
- watch vs ipad

When I come close again to the iPhone/iPad I last used with the airpods, whatever I was listening to on the watch stops playing. My interpretation is the “retaking ownership” stuff.

Note: I have a big multi-story house, whoever tries to reproduce this please make sure you first bring your watch&airpods really really far from whatever feeble bluetooth signal from iphone/ipad. (but still within the home wifi range)
 
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This has been going on for years, like the watch is a second class citizen and the assumption is that if there’s an “adult in the room” (iphone or ipad) then the expected behavior is
- “adult” (iphone/ipad) sends direct audio to the airpods
- the watch acts as a mere remote to the “adult”
 
giggles said:
Maybe retake ownership is wrong wording, as it’s not like it then plays anything from the iPhone on the Airpods.

But this happened to me all the time, even (I wanna stress this out) before iOS14, both
- watch vs iphone
- watch vs ipad

When I come close again to the iPhone/iPad I last used with the airpods, whatever I was listening to on the watch stops playing. My interpretation is the “retaking ownership” stuff.

Note: I have a big multi-story house, whoever tries to reproduce this please make sure you first bring your watch really really far from whatever feeble bluetooth signal from iphone/ipad. (but still within the home wifi range)
Click to expand...

From your explanation it could be a network issue. Sound like the watch try to connect to a network. This happen to me once when I ran outdoor using cellular and suddenly the watch connected to known WiFi hotspot but that hotspot is no use. It’s slow to response so my music on the watch just stopped. Even though you listened to podcast on device this could happen if the watch try to connect to something I believe.
 
I see, you made me think of a test I could do. I could disable all wifi APs except one so I’m sure there’s no wifi roaming between APs. (I wonder if the series 6 with the new 2.4GHz+5GHz wifi module would handle this better?)
 
I know something similar while listening music with the watch.
Stop for a minute to speak to a friend, tap my left airpod and bam! music comes from my iphone.
Everytime. I completely stopped listening music from the watch.
Too much hassle to change back to the watch after a small break.
 
tomtattoo said:
No, doubletap the right airpod.
And: before ios13 it was never a problem. The airpods remembered which device I was listening to.
Click to expand...
I see. iOS 14 introduced automatic switching, and it doesn’t include the watch I believe. Pull one out to pause should still work though.
 
Yeah the switch to watch is half-assed, there’s a pop up dialogue to select your airpods name or other bt destination.
Hopefully next year it will be a full first class citizen in the magical audio switching system.
 
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