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
    2022-10-24T09:45:48+00:00

    This does not fix the issue that is the subject of this thread; i.e. loss of hands-free mode.

    To test this:

    * In Windows11: Perform the bluetooth troubleshooter

    * In MS Teams:

    • Settings -> Devices
    • Choose Sony wh-1000MX4 headphones as speaker (there used to be a hands-free profile but this is gone now), Yeti mic as microphone.
    • Make a test call. No audio is heard.

    If the WH-1000MX4 is used for both speaker and mic MS Teams works as expected.

    This thread is about the loss of hands-free mode that allowed the headphones to operate with a different mic.

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-10-19T13:44:18+00:00

    I also had the problem, that I couldn't hear anythin in Skype as soon as I switched to the microphone of my Surface Headphones. I tried many things, including doing a factory reset of the headphones. Nothing helped.

    For whatever reason the (now "invisible") hands-free mode didn't work.

    In another forum I saw the tipp to run the Bluetooth troubleshooter (in Windows 11 -> Settings -> System -> Troubleshoot -> other troubleshooters). And magically this did the trick for me, and I can hear again :)

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-10-10T06:01:30+00:00

    I got a fancy Surface Headphone with the same issue. Can Microsoft start solving this issue instead of blaming device makers in this case?🤷‍♂️

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-09-22T07:53:53+00:00

    I have this problem, the MFR of my PC wants me to reinstall windows and then send my PC back to them. I was on a chat with Microsoft and they said the same thing, they said to reinstall windows. This is nonsense. I bought this PC in NOV 21, Bluetooth worked flawlessly across all apps. Games, music, movies everything had normal sound quality, you know like a phone.

    Then all of a sudden ALL my headphones will ONLY connect as headsets. But I have a windows 10 laptop sitting right next to my 11 one. And the exact same headphones for both. On 10 you just select "headphones" from the audio window and it works fine. you can see the same audio window below. It is impossible for me to select Headphones on 11. That is the same window on 11 and on 10. But on 11 it's unresponsive.

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-09-18T04:33:49+00:00

    The problem I'm running into is that I don't get the choice of mic off and better sound because when I click don't allow for the mic setting, nothing changes for audio.

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