Yesterday evening, I was lying in bed listening to an audiobook. It was playing on my iPhone, and I was listening on my AirPods. Suddenly, the audiobook stopped. I picked up my iPhone, and saw that it was still playing. It took a few seconds for me to think of checking where the audio was going. When I did, I found that it was sending the audio to my car.
My partner had just gotten home, and parked the car by the side of the house; on the same side as the bedroom. The car would have been about 10m from where I was, roughly the limit of Bluetooth transmission.
But why did the iPhone switch? It knew I was listening on the AirPods; why did it think I wanted to listen in the car?
I don’t know which device – the car or the iPhone – caused this, but it’s wrong. The iPhone shouldn’t switch audio without an alert, or a dialog asking if I want to switch.