Hands on Tech 207 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

00:00 - Mikah Sargent (Host)
Coming up on Hands-On Tech. We take a look at a pesky but maybe helpful feature where your AirPods connect automatically to different devices. Stay tuned. This is Twit. Hello and welcome to Hands-On Tech, the show where I, micah Sargent, take your tech questions and do my best to answer them and, in many cases, do. Yay, today our question comes in from Derek. Derek writes in to say I need your help with a weird AirPods problem.

00:34
My AirPods Pro will automatically connect to my wife's phone randomly, and for those out there listening who have AirPods Pro or AirPods and who are a little bit aware of the built-in features for this, you've probably already decided that you've figured out what's going on here, like I did whenever I started to read this email, but I promise you there's more to the situation than what you might think. So continue to listen, don't tune out just yet. I've only ever paired them to my phone and never to my wife's phone, but occasionally, when I try to connect to my phone, they will connect to my wife's phone instead. Then she will go into settings and Bluetooth on her phone and tap on forget device. At this point, my phone doesn't recognize the AirPods anymore, neither does hers. I then have to reconnect them to my phone. I've tried Google for the problem, but didn't have any luck. And then Derek Derek you wonderful human being You've provided more info, and we love it when people provide more info. Great work, derek. Derek says other things that might help you. I do have the setting on for automatic connection between devices. We are a part of the same family with our iCloud accounts. We do have a Mac studio that we share, but we have separate accounts. These are the only things I can think of that connect us somehow.

01:59
So my first thought whenever it came to this is that AirPods have this great feature that gives you the ability to automatically connect to a device that you're using and by default, that is the feature that is used. When Apple first introduced this feature which I'll talk more about in just a moment it was not great, and over time the company made adjustments to how the automatic connection feature worked and it has, honestly, actually improved a little bit. I still don't use it. So what this does is this automatic connection feature is it has a little bit of behavioral analysis involved and it looks at what device you're using at a given time and what you're doing on that device to inform whether or not it should switch the AirPods connection to the device that you're using. So, for example, the device that you're using. So, for example, if I have an iPhone, a Mac and an iPad and I have my AirPods Pro when I first set them up with my phone, not only does it set up via Bluetooth on my phone but it also ties it to my iCloud account. Then any other device I have that is logged into my iCloud account also gets access to that device and it shows up in the Bluetooth connectivity area.

03:31
When I'm using my AirPods Pro on my phone let's say I'm I don't know I'm listening to music and I pause the song on my phone and I move over to my computer and I start watching a YouTube video, the AirPods, if automatic connection is turned on, may switch to be connected because the Bluetooth it knows it shows in the Bluetooth menu it's all paired that way because it had shared it via my iCloud account then it may connect to the Mac and start outputting the audio into my AirPods. It knows that I'm wearing them, it knows that they're on and that you know listening would make sense through my AirPods, given that you know I'm currently wearing them. And then, if I were to switch back to my phone, then it may switch back to that. Now I have found this to be an incredibly annoying feature that I do not like and I want to be in control button, click or tap my favorite button in the Bluetooth settings, which is the I button for info, and in there, while you are connected to the device, you will see an option that says connect to this blank iPhone, ipad, mac automatically or when last connected to this Mac.

05:06
Automatically is the thing I just talked about where it behaviorally tries to switch. I have that turned off. When last connected to this Mac is the sort of neutral one Says hey, if I was connected to this before, then go ahead and connect to this again, otherwise, leave it alone. That's how I have it set on all of my devices. If I was last connected to this, keep connecting to that. Don't try to switch over.

05:31
Annoyingly, if I have an iPad that has not been charged in a while and I plug that in and a new operating system has been installed and I've maybe reset my AirPods for whatever reason, then automatically connect is turned on and then iPad charges and then immediately it takes over my AirPods. So I have to go in on the iPad and do the same thing there. So, to be clear, this is not what Derek is. This is not an issue. This is not the issue that Derek has, because Derek does have automatically turned on, automatically connect, turned on, but not for his wife's phone, and especially given that his wife's phone has never been paired with the AirPods. So what the heck is going on here? Right? Well, derek followed up, and so let me actually let me pause here real quick just to say, if that's the case, that you are having issues, issues like this and you've been wondering, why is it? When I start to log into my Mac? It's because of that automatically connected thing. So don't worry that there's something going on that is supposed to be the default behavior, but you can turn it off. You can turn it off. Now.

06:42
My first thought, as ScooterX in the chat has said, is that is the wife who has a different phone. Is the wife using the same iCloud account as Derek? Is the wife using the same login as Derek? Derek did specify, we are a part of the same family with our iCloud accounts, and so I feel like Derek would only specify that if each of the phones is logged into their own separate account and is just shared as a family. And here's the thing that family sharing can sometimes muck about with these systems, because it is meant to give more sort of shared access to things, but we don't think that's the issue whenever it comes to this. Because Derek has followed up with a really interesting bit of information. Derek writes.

07:40
I wanted to follow up with some more info I found out about this issue. I think it is a shared Mac issue. I noticed that profiles on a Mac share all of the Bluetooth devices connected to it. That's probably how the mouse works between profiles. So when I connected my AirPods to the Mac Studio, it automatically was added to Bluetooth on his account. But then it also got automatically added to Bluetooth on her Mac account which, because she is logged into iCloud and he is logged into iCloud on their individual accounts, ended up syncing the Bluetooth list to those multiple devices. In the case it was her iPhone. So when she went into tap forget and it made her phone forget, then it also made her Mac forget, which told iCloud hey, forget this device across everything that's logged into my iCloud account, which meant that her Mac forgot. But because she is one account on the Mac and the Bluetooth profiles are shared between devices. Then it caused that to drop from the list for her account, which caused it to drop from the list for Derek's account, which caused then it to tell iCloud to get rid of that device across his devices, to forget the device across his devices, which caused it to drop away from his iPhone.

09:16
Now here's the interesting thing. Derek says we tested it. This doesn't happen with her AirPods, to my account. So I'm guessing there's some kind of bug with my AirPods. The workaround I have right now is to go into settings for my AirPods on the Mac and her iPhone and change from automatically connect to this device to only when last connected. It seems to stop it from connecting automatically. So ultimately, derek, yes, the best thing that you can do is on the iPhone, on her iPhone, switch that to only connect when last connected and then on the Mac, while she's logged in, switch that to only while last connected.

10:02
But I do think there's some sort of weird bug going on here, and I think that it's on the iCloud side of things, because it seems like what's supposed to happen in this case is that your device, your AirPods, should be telling the system. Hey, this is a personal device and I only want you to connect it to me while I'm on my account. So what needs to happen, I think, is a full-on reset of your AirPods, derek, and I want to tell you this is a little bit involved, but a long time ago I was having horrible issues with my AirTags and I could not get them to work, and I've talked about it in the past, so I'm not going to go into a lot of detail. But essentially, it resulted in me needing to talk to actual engineers from Apple who work on the connection between iCloud and then Apple hardware specifically, and one of the things that they did was they had me go through the process of, oddly enough, forgetting my AirPods across devices, and it was not as simple as just going in and choosing to forget them in iCloud. You need to if you want to do this properly, so to speak, and see if we can't fix this bug that's making your AirPods act differently from hers, which, when she connected them to her account on her device alone, didn't have this issue. You need to go into Find my and remove the AirPods from there, and then you need to go into Bluetooth on each of the devices that you have where these AirPods are showing up not just one but all of them and choose Forget Device Oftentimes it will happen where it sinks and it's fine, it'll. You know you do it on one and then it makes it be, it makes it drop from all of them. But check that each of the devices truly has your AirPods forgotten and then force a factory reset of AirPods which we'll include a link in the show notes for how to do that and then reconnect them to your device at that point and see if that shakes loose whatever is causing them to appear across devices in the way that they are, because it should not. If your wife's AirPods are able to do this without it kind of linking them between these two different profiles, yours should be able to do so too.

13:05
My only other suggestion to you is to double check that when your wife's account is logged in, it is connected with her iCloud account, that there is an iCloud account that's signed in Actually we call them Apple accounts now that her Apple account is logged in, not just locally as in. You know I have a Mac account and I type in my password and I get in, but that you know messages and all of that stuff is logged in on that device or rather on that Mac account. Because if there's not an account attached to her Mac account, if there's not an Apple account attached to her Mac account, it could be that it's just sort of treating that as a sort of sub account to yours and then defaulting to having it any hardware devices attached to yours and vice versa. So there are some troubleshooting steps, more troubleshooting steps you can take here that don't involve kind of the workarounds that you're doing right now, because I think, ultimately, the goal would be to try to get this how it to behave, how it should be, which is that your AirPods are yours and no one else's, and their you know, her account isn't snatching your AirPods and syncing them between devices. So, derek, thank you for writing in with your question. More importantly, thank you for providing as much information as you did, and then also thank you for following up to say, hey, I think I solved this and here's how I think I solved it, because we never know when other people might be having the same issue out there. So it's always great to be able to get that.

14:43
Uh, something else that's great to get is an access as a membership to club twit at twittv slash club twit. Uh, club twit is an awesome place where you can hang out with your fellow Club Twit fans and pals. For $7 a month you get access to all of our stuff, all of our shows, all of our content, ad-free. You gain access to the TwitPlus bonus feed that has extra content you won't find anywhere else behind the scenes before the show, after the show, special Club Twit events and access to the members-only Discord server. A fun place to go to chat with your fellow Club Twit members and also those of us here at Twit. It's a lot of fun. We're sharing animated GIFs all the time we're chatting.

15:26
Currently, the wonderful people in the chat are helping to answer questions and providing their own guidance and experiences based on what we're talking about. It's so much fun. Again, $7 a month, but still for a limited time. We promise it is limited. At some point we're going to stop offering it Two-week free trial. So if you've yet to try out Club Twit, now's your chance to hop on board and have some fun at twittv slash club twit. So be sure to tune in and or rather to sign up so that you can gain access to that. All righty. Thank you so much for tuning in this week. Again, thank you, derek, for writing in. If you out there have questions for me, I'm seeing them fly in all the time. H-o-t at twittv is how you get in touch. I'd love, I'd be honored to answer your question. Thanks for tuning in and I'll catch you again next week. Bye-bye.