I frequently wear a pair of Bluetooth headphones paired to a computer. If I want to listen to something on my phone I have to re-pair the device to my phone.
Is it possible, through software or hardware, to have both my phone and computer connected in such a way that I can get audio output from either device to my headset simultaneously.
Yes, but you need “multipoint” headphones that are designed to do that. Low end headphones tend not to have that feature. Medium to high end often do, but make sure before you buy.
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You don’t have to re-pair. Just leave Bluetooth running on both your phone and PC, and your headphones will automatically connect to whatever device is playing audio. It’s that simple. I do it all the time.
That only works if the Bluetooth device is able to connect to two or more devices at the same time. My headset doesn’t, so if I want to switch sources, I need to explicitly disconnect the headset from the phone and manually connect it from the PC (in both cases, open Bluetooth settings, click on theb headset that’s paired and click either connect or disconnect). It’s a bit of effort but not too bad. Not as bad as pairing though.
If I don’t disconnect from the last connected device, my headset will automatically connect to it and only play media from it.
Don’t mean to be rude, but kind of ancientass headphones don’t support pairing with multiple devices at a time? What year is it? 2003?
My headphones can pair with a lot of devices. It can actively play media from only one source at a time, though. The ability for headsets to play sound from two sources at the same time is still pretty rare. And I’m not even sure playing from 3 sources exists.
Well I mean yeah; no headset can do that.
Others saying you need a multi-point feature but I thought it was just all devices with blue tooth 5.
I’ve had several headphones that do this but implementation seems buggy in all of them. I’m forever turning everything off and on, re-pairing, et cetera.
I don’t have quite the same issues, but I am fairly regularly running into issues where software on the other device is asking to play audio, and stealing focus. Make sure to mute unpredictable sources of sound (like Windows sounds or phone notifications).
Bluetooth devices and/or software implementations of audio are incredibly buggy.
Examples:
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Saying “OK Google” does this, and sometimes detects other sounds. I have to try to never say Google if I’m on Discord for example.
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Google Photos: the memories have audio, and will steal focus even if the audio is off.
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Spotify will sometimes get in a mode where it will constantly lose focus, even though nothing else appears to be demanding audio. When this is happening playback in other apps on my phone will continue to work as expected. This only appears to occur when my computer is on and connected to the headset via Bluetooth.
Other Bluetooth issues:
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Old games may not reliably play audio over Bluetooth. Fallout New Vegas would regularly get into a state where sound effects & voice wouldn’t play, but the radio might continue. Plugging in speakers and using those for New Vegas worked, but introduced other buggy behavior.
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Calls may request exclusive access to the Bluetooth device. Like if you’re on Discord, game audio may fail to play, rather than just playing in a degraded quality, or some other more graceful failover. This may be fixed, I’ve had it work at least once with other headphones, but haven’t tested it further. I just have an external microphone now, and have disabled the “headset” functionality in Windows.
Multi-point may solve your issue, but be aware that what you’re asking for may introduce a bunch of new problems. I still use Bluetooth headphones frequently, and in the way OP seems to want, but there are still significant growing pains, and I’m not sure I can recommend it.
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