Any way to disconnect a bluetooth device automatically?

1

Hi … first time post and I’m hoping someone can help…

I love my Sony WH-1000XM3 bluetooth headphones … BUT … they do not allow you to connect to multiple devices at the same time. This is a known - and frankly ridiculous - flaw in such a premium product.

You can pair to multiple sources but pushing content from, say, my iPhone means I have to disconnect them from my iPad/Mac first if that was the last device to stream to them. This is extremely frustrating and a known limitation.

Imagine being in one part of the house, settling down to listen to a podcast and find that you have to get up and walk into another room to log on to your Mac just to disconnect the bluetooth device binding. Crazy,.

I have considered how to manage this and am drawing a blank.

I usually have my iPhone with me, so the challenge really relates to triggering and auto-disconnecting them from the iPad and Mac.

On the iPad, I considered triggering an automation that would disconnect them. Two issues:

  • there is no suitable automation trigger (sleep? idle for x minutes? even ‘lock’ might work); and
  • I cant find an action to disconnect a bluetooth device… even in IpadOS 14 with Toolbox Pro installed

I am more hopeful on the Mac where I can use Keyboard Maestro to script something on sleep perhaps but that would only solve half the problem.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks !

2

Maybe use Shortcuts to SSH into your Mac to run a command line script that turns the Mac’s bluetooth off for a few mins and then turns it back on?

My only thought was that this should work even if the Mac was locked.

3

Thanks @sylumer

I’ve managed to get Keyboard Maestro to disconnect the headphones on the Mac but iPadOS remains a challenge sadly. I’ll continue to tinker with that and post here if I find a solution that works.,

Thanks again for your speedy response.

Cheers, Brian

4

I’m not running the beta yet, so I don’t know if the details are practical, but maybe you could utilise sending an iMessage or e-mail as a Shortcuts trigger to disable Bluetooth on the iPad? You could then have a shortcut you run on your iPhone to trigger the disconnect on Both mac and iPad.