Windows 10: Can only connect via Bluetooth on hands-free mode windows 11

Hello everyone,I seem to have a problem when I try to connect via Bluetooth to a speaker or headphone set since the only way I can reproduce sound is in hands-free mode, which significantly reduces the audio quality. I have tried disabling this feature on the "services" tab of the device but when I do it I can't select the speaker as an output device it doesn't show up, although the computer is connected to it.Does anyone have a solution for this? Thanks for the help and sorry for my bad English.

:)

 

Windows 11 | No Hands free mode for bluetooth earphones

Hi,

So, yesterday I upgraded from Windows 10 to Windows 11 and everything seemed to be working fine until I connected my bluetooth earphones.

When you connect your bluetooth earphones you expect to see two output devices, Headset (music) and Hands-Free mode (voice) but I can only see the Headset mode.

I checked the earphone properties from the Device Manager and I can see "Hands-Free telephony" in the Services tab but in the Output Devices, the hands-free mode is not visible at all.

I've tried everything from re-connecting to reinstalling drivers but nothing seems to be working.

This is preventing from attending any Meetings on apps like Google Meet or Microsoft Teams.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Regards,

Kartikey

 

Windows 11 | No Hands free mode for bluetooth earphones

I think I might have some sort of a solution!

I've been using it for the last couple of hours and it seems to work!

This solution only enables me to use the headphones on hands-free mode (the mode with the low quality audio + mic) so it's not suitable for listening to music or anything like that.

Basically the idea is to trick windows to use the mic all the time, that way the auto switch to audio mode (which was introduced in win11 - see here, and I believe is the one causing this issue) won't trigger and the headphones will remain in the hands-free mode.

Here are the steps I did -

• Preparation Step (only need to do once) do this when you're headphone are disconnected. Not sure if this one is needed but haven't yet tested without it.
  
  • Go to control panel
    
  • Click on Sound (make sure you're not in "View by: category" mode so the Sound icon appears)
    
  • Click on the Recording tab
    
  • Right click and disable each one of the recording devices except for your headphones.
    
• Day to Day use - we now want the headphones to start in hands-free mode and stick to it
  
  • Once again, open the Sound setting and click on the Recording tab
    
  • Connect your headphones
    
  • Now, the recording tab tries to use the mic on the headphone to display the sound level, so the headphones should be in hands-free mode. As long as you keep this window open, the headphones should remain in that mode.
    
  • You can now go into zoom/google meet/teams/any other video conference app you use
    

As I said, this worked for me for the past day... even made some zoom calls and people were actually able to hear me again

Let me know if this helped you!

 

Windows 11 | No Hands free mode for bluetooth earphones

Sorry, that's not correct.

When you pair Bluetooth earphones with Windows, you should expect to see two Bluetooth profiles in Windows:

• Headphones, for listening to music; and
  
• Headset, for video-conferencing.
  

The Hands-free profile is for controlling a device with voice commands, and the most well-known applications are Android Auto and Apple CarPlay.

What's confusing, and frustrating, is that Bluetooth is its own technology, separate from Windows, so if you're having trouble with Bluetooth, you need to ask for help from the device manufacturer - in your case, the earphone manufacturer - not from Microsoft. Any advice you get here centers around reinstalling the device or the Bluetooth software, which only helps temporarily if it helps at all.

Adding to the confusion and the frustration is that these three profiles were originally designed to be used with a mobile device - a phone, mostly - not a computer. So device manufacturers need to find a way to 'make it work' with a computer.