Decoupling voice over speech from connected Bluetooth headphones

By Prateek Dujari., 11 August, 2025

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Hi,
So I have a pair of headphones that I connect using Bluetooth to my iPhone at which point I can hear not just any audio playing on my phone but also VoiceOver speech, all through my Bluetooth connected headphones. my main intention is to use wired 3.5 mm audio cable from the same headphones connected to the 3.5 mm jack on my windows computer where I ultimately want to play audio and listen to the audio from my Windows computer on the headphones. at the same time I want to also listen to VoiceOver on my iPhone setting next to me because the headphones come with their own app which has a graphic equalizer which I can apparently change on the fly and immediately hear the changes to the sound as I’m connected using the 3.5 mm audio cable to my Windows computer.
They expected Havior of the headphones is that as soon as I connect the 3.5 mm audio cable between my headphones and my Windows computer, the full Bluetooth connection audio streaming from my phone immediately super seated as advertised by the headphone manufacturer, by the audio coming from my windows computer with which I have a hard connection to this 3.5 mm audio cable. and the headphones switches to BLE or a low energy Bluetooth connection to my phone which has extremely negligible battery draw. This BLE connection between the headphones and the phone totally still allows a cited user to change the graphic equalizer settings on the headphones app on my phone which is sitting on my side and noticed the changes in audio coming from our windows computer. The challenge of course is that because I am blind, voiceover completely become quiet or at least with this specific Connection configuration where I have a 3.5 mm wired connection listening to audio from my computer and a BLEO low energy Bluetooth connection to my phone, I don’t hear any sound/audio/speech from my iPhone anymore.
Is there anyway to set VoiceOver on my iPhone such that no matter whether my headphones are connected wired to my windows computer who’s audio I’m listening to all weather my headphones are not hardwired to any audio sources but simply has a full power Bluetooth connection for audio streaming from my iPhone, that voice over speech always, repeat always, always comes from my iPhone speakers? I don’t see any such option under audio ducking section inside the accessibility settings.

Options

Comments

By sockhopsinger on Monday, August 11, 2025 - 16:40

Subject line says it all. I know you can use bluetooth speakers with Voiceover only coming from the phone. You have to go into settings, bluetooth, find your device, and hit the more button. You have to define what type of bluetooth device it is. When I set it as a speaker, Voiceover stays on the phone. That may or may not work with headphones. :You can try it.

By Prateek Dujari. on Monday, August 11, 2025 - 19:04

Awesome man thanks! They’re a bunch of options to select from without any barriers from the iOS Bluetooth settings, and once I chose device type as speaker I got the desired effect after I shut down and restart of both my phone as well as the headphones.