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
    2022-06-05T23:22:57+00:00

    What helped me with Sony SBS-XB23 was to remove the audio device in the System -> Sound panel and then connect it via adding new Input (yes!) device. Adding it as a new Output device resulted in picking only that, the output, and handsfree mode couldn't be added afterwards because no input was there. And yes, I believe it is Microsoft's logical problem to fix.

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-06-13T17:19:19+00:00

    In my case Intel® Smart Sound Technology showed a message saying Windows had turned it off because it reported a problem. I re-enabled it and my Bluetooth microphones started working again. Thank you OnionSpace! I spent hours today reading, trying different solutions, reconnecting, rebooting, etc. Your post gave me the answer to my issue.

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-06-13T18:02:13+00:00

    Just to let you know that in the current Insider version of Windows 11, you can no longer see this. The tabs no longer exist. The new page has separate sections for input and output devices, and you actually have to go into each device to see whether it is the default or not. I cannot see any option to disable/disconnect.

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-06-15T21:16:03+00:00

    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!

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-06-29T13:49:58+00:00

    It is a shame this behaviour.
    I have 2 devices and they connect in "Hands-free" mode, one of them I can control it and the other one it is unavoidable.

    It is not a driver problem, it is windows 11 hiding complexity from Bluetooth and rising a lot of problems because of it.

    It is someone from Microsoft trying to fix this?

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