How do I keep my bluetooth headphones from connecting to my windows 10 machine when it's connected to my phone?

Question

My laptop (running Win10) repeatedly "steals" the bluetooth connection for my headphones while they're connected to my phone. The only way I've been able to prevent the headphones' connection from switching to the laptop is to play some media or make a phone call immediately after reconnecting to my phone, or to unpair the headphones from the laptop.

The headphones are Plantronics Backbeat Go 2, and the specifications from the Plantronics product page give the following information for the Bluetooth entry:

Bluetooth v2.1: A2DP 1.2, AVRCP, HFP v1.5, HSP v1.1

Thanks in advance!

Solution

As far as I know, there is no way to dissuade Windows from connecting with a paired Bluetooth device. Some methods exist for that, which involve brute-force solutions :

• Connect the Bluetooth device after every log-in (including sleep, lock-screen, etc.) and then disconnect - Windows will not reconnect to a disconnected device.
• Pair-unpair the Bluetooth device for every use.
• Enable-disable the Bluetooth device for every use.
• Enable-disable the Bluetooth system service of Windows for every use.

For usability, one may create scripts for one or more of the above actions and use them in desktop icons, or use AutoHotKey to bind them to hotkeys.

Here are some useful commands for disable/enable of the Bluetooth Support system service:

net stop bthserv
net start bthserv

For the disable/enable of individual devices, you may use the DevCon command. You would need to know the identifying device id and the commands to use in elevated mode would look like :

devcon enable "USB\VID_0A12&PID_0001"
devcon disable "USB\VID_0A12&PID_0001"

Windows seems to be the only operating system that does aggressive auto-connection this way and doesn't have any setting for turning it off.

Comments

[acejavelin]

Depending on your Bluetooth software, you can set it not to autoconnect (for example, in Broadcom BT management software), but if it is just using the embedded Win10 device management that isn't an option. You would either need to toggle off Bluetooth on the laptop or unpair the headset from the laptop. Which specific headset MAY be relevant, can you update the question with that information?

[Pete]

@acejavelin - I added the headphone details. And I'm using the Win10 embedded utility. I'll see if I can identify the Bluetooth hardware manufacturer for my machine and see if they offer a utility I can add.

[Pete]

@acejavelin - Broadcom is the hardware manufacturer, but they don't provide any drivers or software on their site anymore and they state any updates should be managed through Windows Update, which finds nothing to apply. I also can't find a reliable site to download it from. Sounds like I might be stuck.

[TontyTon]

Try updating the windows to 1803, if it isn't. As windows is not behaving like this with me.

[JNevill]

This was my fear. I don't mind Windows being aggresive about other protocols (please always attempt to connect my mouse and keyboard) but when it comes to AVDTP, leave my damned speakers and headphones alone. I'll connect those when I want.

[Jean]

All they had to do was to enable a pop up prompt when a device is attempting to connect.