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Comment by bluescrn | Hacker News Reader

Can headphones that stick to the spec actually play nicely with multiple devices? - switching quickly between phone and laptop like Airpods do?

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Yes, this is called Bluetooth multipoint and has been common on non-Apple devices (for example Bose) for a few years now. Requires no logins and is vendor-agnostic.

It's finnicky though. Sometimes, if I get a call on my phone and hang up, my Bose headphones tell my Mac to start playing music.

I can stop music on my phone and immediately listen to music from my laptop. I have non-apple headphones, a non-apple laptop and an iPhone. There is no apple magic dust that makes this happen.

Can you do that with 7 devices? Can you pair your device with your phone and it automatically pairs with all of your devices?

> switching quickly between phone and laptop like Airpods do?

They do that? Mine can't even switch quickly between my corporate and my own iphone.

Are they on the same iCloud account? I believe that's the magic needed.

Of course not, that's the whole point of having a separate corp phone ;)

But why would switching headphone connections need the cloud... ah... nevermind...

It doesn’t need “the cloud” (switching works offline) but it does need to verify that the device it’s switching to belongs to you, which it does using a keypair associated with your account.

Didn't I previously prove this by completing the pairing process anyway?

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