While Apple (and to a lesser degree, Google) have made huge strides over the last few years in helping you move your headphones from one device to another throughout the day, it’s still often a little wonky. It can work well, but some days are better than others. I’m finding it much easier to just have a set of headphones dedicated to each device so that they always just work.
This started years with my desktop computers (one at home, one at the office), that each have a pair of cheap wired headphones always plugged in. If I need to hop on a call on those computers, or watch a video, or anything else that requires sound, I just pick those up and they work immediately 100% of the time. I played with the bluetooth settings on both computers to use my main earbuds for everything, but it was wildly inconsistent so I just stuck with the wired buds.
Mobile
I’ve been doing that on my desktop computers for years, but something I did recently on mobile expanded on this concept a bit. While I have a pair of wireless buds always connected to my phone (the Google Pixel Buds Pro), I had a different situation come up last week. I wanted to go for a run, which I often do without music, but I wanted some tunes with me. I didn’t want to carry my phone, so my watch was going to do the work.
Setting up the watch with offline music was easy enough, but I then had to pair some earbuds to it. Rather than using the same pair as my phone, I dug out an older pair of wireless buds instead and paired them with the watch.
It was perfect.
I generally keep the newer buds in my pocket so I have quick access to them for my phone. For running, though, I always grab the older ones because they only talk to my watch. Every device I use has a dedicated set of headphones, so there’s never a need to convince some bluetooth buds to switch with me to another device. They all simply work on their own dedicated device.
It’s a small thing, for sure, but in the hectic part of the day it’s nice to have one less potential issue to worry about.
I have tons of headphones too but instead of a specialized pair for every device I have a pair for every activity. I’ve made myself back off on buying new headphones once I got to about 8 pairs.
That seems like a smart way to handle it. Really, it sounds kind of similar to mine. One pair for walking, one for running, one when sitting at my desktop, etc.