this post was submitted on 17 May 2025
48 points (94.4% liked)

techsupport

2793 readers
6 users here now

The Lemmy community will help you with your tech problems and questions about anything here. Do not be shy, we will try to help you.

If something works or if you find a solution to your problem let us know it will be greatly apreciated.

Rules: instance rules + stay on topic

Partnered communities:

You Should Know

Reddit

Software gore

Recommendations

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

My partner keeps the Bluetooth antenna of her Android Pixel 4a (5G) on because she wears a Fitbit. On the occasion I want to use Bluetooth (e.g. in my car or via portable speaker), devices will ALWAYS connect to her phone over mine if she's anywhere nearby. Sometimes it even steals the connection when I was already connected.

Why is this? Is there some way to steal the connection back?

It happened when I had a Pixel 4a (non-5G) and with a Pixel 8a. It's especially maddening when it's the audio stream in my car. I believe I've tried unpairing both phones, pairing mine first and then hers, and hers still ends up taking priority.

EDIT: Tech Support answers only, please. If I wanted to get trolled there are plenty of other places for that.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] rob299@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

Someone would need to remove the Bluetooth connection from your partners phone.

  1. they can simply turn off Bluetooth when you are using it the device.
  2. delete her Bluetooth connection form her phone that is connecting their phone to your device and they will have to reconnect it manually when they want to use it.
[–] Deconceptualist@lemm.ee 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (5 children)

Why should her connection even matter? If my phone was paired to the speaker first, shouldn't it get priority? Or some other mechanism? Hers seems to steal priority no matter what.

She uses a smartwatch and that requires Bluetooth. Plus she's often upstairs listening to a podcast or something. When I turn on my speaker downstairs, it starts playing her podcast instead of connecting to my phone. Like man, I just want to listen to music, not inconvenience her.

[–] running_ragged@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

My devices headsets, speakers etc will usually try to reconnect to last phone/tablet that it was connected to.

If they connect to tue wrong one, You can usually trigger them to look for a new device, connect to it from your phone, then as long as your phone has BT on when its next turned on, it should connect to your phone first.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)