UKH

Real long shot this one. I've spent hours on Google and pretty much given up.

I've got Bose Bluetooth earbuds that I like to use on my phone and laptop. I've had them a year and it's been fine. I have them paired to both devices, and to switch I just open Bluetooth on either device and click Connect to use them. In the last week though, Windows has decided to continuously connect to the earbuds whenever it's running. So there is now no way to use them with my phone while my laptop is on. Every time I switch them to my phone the laptop immediately reconnects to them. There was a Windows update recently which I assume is to blame, and which I can't remove. I've had to unpair the earbuds from my laptop, and since pairing them again is a faff it effectively means I can no longer use them with it. I was hoping I could script something to pair and unpair them on demand, but this seems to be impossible.

I'm pretty pissed off with Microsoft and their dick behaviour. No alternative for me though.

Turn off Bluetooth on the laptop?

Assuming you don't need it for anything else...

A parallel rant (I don't know how to fix your issue), is how I rue the day they jibbed the aux jacks on mobile phones and the like. This interferes with my falling asleep routine which went...

Put music on > Fall asleep > Be awoken by a lively section of music > Pull headphone cable from socket > Fall back asleep

And now goes...

Put music on > Fall asleep > Be awoken by a lively section of music > Power down headphones > Switch Bluetooth off on phone > Adjust volume on phone so alarm is still effective > Fall back asleep eventually.

Although all this cloud whatnottery is undeniably impressive you can't beat a cable imo. I'm reminded of Buzz Aldrin launching the Eagle back into space by inserting a felt tip pen into a broken switch, whereas if it was a SmartScreen that had gone down him and Neil would still be up there now.

I don't have earbuds but for the Bose QC headphones, it's the headphones that control which device is active, not the computer. Headphones are connected to two devices simultaneously. 

It would be an easy option, but unfortunately I need it for my mice. I have several in different locations, and I'm not prepared to lose the convenience of just sitting down and grabbing the mouse.

I have the Bose QC earbuds and that's not the case for them. For some reason the best and most expensive earbuds you can get don't support Multipoint... 

Unpair the headphones from the laptop, then?

It will mean you have to pair/unpair when you want to use the phones with the laptop.

Pairing should be a manually activated process... But who knows what MS have done...

Do a system restore to roll back the broken update?

I've still got a phone with a headphone jack. No doubt my next one won't though.

Can't you just take off the headphones? With my earbuds, as soon as I take them out they pause the music. I don't need to do anything else.

That's what I've done. But it means that every time I want to use the earbuds with the laptop I have to go through the pairing process. It's a faff and I can't be arsed. And it shouldn't have to be this way.

I can't disable updates. It's a work laptop.

Some possible nasty solutions suggested here: https://superuser.com/questions/1310471/how-do-i-keep-my-bluetooth-headphon...

Thanks, but I've been to that page and tried their suggestions already. I'm 99% sure there is no way round this. I'm surprised there aren't more complaints. It must be a pretty standard thing to want to do.

My current phone is the last of that series that still had a headphone jack, which was a concious decision at the time, as I could have got a later model without. Reasoning was partly one less thing to have to charge before use and partly that I can plug in a splitter and let both kids listen to something on it.

Since I got a Garmin watch with music player last year, I've now got a pair of Bluetooth headphones and now the phone jack is largely unused.

Indeed.

I think it's called 'enshitification'...

Usually applied to apps and websites, but equally applicable to operating systems.

I have a pair of Sony LinkBuds that support multipoint that I use with my work laptop and my iPhone. The laptop/windows/standard bluetooth drivers would not play nicely with the LinkBuds. Solution was to buy a TP-Link Nano USB Bluetooth 5.0 Adapter. I disabled the onboard bluetooth adapter and use the TP-Link bluetooth drivers.

First off I would try the laptop manufacturer or chipset manufacturer bluetooth-adapter drivers instead of the standard Microsoft drivers. My work laptop will not cooperate with my LG monitor at home or with the office wifi at work using the standard MS drivers. Occasionally after a Windows update I have to reinstall the HP/AMD drivers.

That's something I haven't tried, thanks. I might even have a Bluetooth adapter knocking around somewhere. I will give it a go.

I installed the Intel driver from Lenovo's site and lo and behold, it's fixed!

Thanks for the suggestion.

Perhaps you should instead celebrate the day that someone invented the USB-C to 3.5mm audio socket adaptor?  They're not particularly expensive (unless you want a white one that comes is a box with a fruit-related logo on it!)  Mine works exactly as you describe with my Pixel 7, whether you unplug the USB-C plug from the phone, or the headphone plug from the socket on the adaptor i.e. the phone stops playing audio (it doesn't revert to the phone speaker).  It also recognises the headphones as soon as you plug them in, no need to faff with pairing/unpairing, or working out which device has connected itself to which.

Bluetooth has pretty much naff all to do with cloud technology.