Windows 11 | No Hands free mode for bluetooth earphones

Anonymous
2021-11-04T05:17:20+00:00

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 for home | Windows 11 | Devices and drivers

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  1. Anonymous
    2022-11-06T22:41:24+00:00

    Hey. In Control Panel > Sound, do you see BOTH headset and heaphones for the 1000XM4? I only see headphones. But, for my earbuds (Jabra 75t), I see both a headphones and headset playback device. In other words, I'm trying to establish whether the loss of headset profile is at the level of MS Teams or MS windows.

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-11-06T22:36:23+00:00

    I spoke to soon. This morning, the hands-free speaker is no longer visible in the MS Teams devices pane. And, like before, if I try and use the other WH-1000XM4 headset profile, I lose sound when choosing another speaker.

    Summary:

    * Friday: application of the 22H2 update restored the hands-free headset

    * Monday: hands-free was no longer present after starting up the laptop

    So, it looks like the operating system knows about the hands-free bluetooth profile, but something (teams?) is disabling it.

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-11-04T05:08:03+00:00

    Good news! I applied the windows 11 22H2 update which was available today and the matter is resolved for me.

    In the MS Teams Devices panel, I can now choose "Headset (WH-1000XM4 Hands-Free)" for speaker and my Yeti mic for microphone. Works fine.

    In summary, the Microsoft update allows both Headphones and Headset again for the Sony WH-1000XM4.

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-11-03T20:15:03+00:00

    In Win10, you used to be able to set the "Stereo" headset as the default device, but then set the "Hands-Free" one as the default communication device. But in Win11, it's not possible. Windows expects the applications to intelligently switch depending on what they require. But some of the applications that I use require that I set the default device in the settings, and I can only choose the bluetooth headset itself, and doing that does not allow it to switch at all. Making the headset that I have worthless.

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-10-25T18:11:20+00:00

    I was having the same problem, but after some experimenting and using some ideas from this thread I seem to have fixed my issue.

    It seems that while Microsoft have hidden the two profiles Windows 11 is actually doing a good job switching automatically, the problem on my setup was that Teams is not specifically listed on the permission list and is lumped in with the "Desktop Apps", as is the sound recording configuration tool.

    So to fix my setup I used the Control Panel > Sound to set my headset as default communication device, then in Settings > Privacy & Security > Microphone I set the permission "Let desktop apps access your microphone" to true.

    This allows Teams to use the microphone and it switches to the Hands-Free profile when the test call starts.

    This unfortunately means that any app can use the microphone, and I found it annoying when running an app like a game that has voice capability Windows 11 switches to Hands-Free mode even though I am not using the voice system.

    What I would like is for the permission list to not lump all apps together and list them all individually so I can choose which specific one gets to use it, similar to the app permissions on an android device.

    Hope this helps some people.

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