Windows 11 keeps changing audio output.

Did you not reply to my post earlier on Feb 18th? Maybe it was your alter ego.

I think that Jeigh Neither has some fair points. There is a different level of control that Apple has over it's ecosystem that both throttles and refines the technology (and inflates the price!).

If I were a Microsoft Engineer reading these threads I can imagine that I would be seeing that a lot of the nuance about use behavior and the various types of devices are being missed by our complaints. Maybe we should put ourselves in their shoes for a minute and try and try to think of what they might be asking themselves.

Q: What do we as users want the behavior to be?

A: This is a 6 part answer, see below.

A.1: We want some recognition that the Windows API that handles the current audio output device is keeping track of which audio generic device name which is currently being used (i.e. which name shows up when you hover over the speaker icon on the icon tray at the right side of the taskbar).

A.2: And we want control whether Windows switches the current audio output device to a newly plugged in device when it goes from "not plugged in" to "plugged in". We know we always have the option to do this manually by doing Right click (on speaker icon) --> "Sound Settings" --> "Choose where to play sound" menu and selecting it there (this is the System > Sound menu). But we want control over whether and when the automatic change takes place.

A.3: EXCEPT that may still want certain just plugged in devices to switch to automatically. For instance I don't want my speakers to play automatically for the whole office anytime they are plugged into an unrecognized monitor. Or TheChristopher1983 may not want his device to switch from where it's playing to whatever is plugged into his Lenovo dock unit. However, we might have a previously recognized preferred audio device (e.g. my Jabra Link 370 headphones) that we do want to take over when it goes from "not plugged in" to "plugged in".

A.4: Therefore I think we need Windows Sound Settings to maintain a list of recognized preferred audio devices that do we want to switch to use for the active output when it's state goes from "not plugged in" to "plugged in". This could be HDMI, USB, Bluetooth, headphone jack, etc.

A.5: And we of course need a button so when you go to System --> Sound --> Properties (Headset Earphone / Jabra Link 370) you can select a checkbox next to some text that says something like "Remember this preferred device". And this adds this generic device name to the list of recognized preferred audio devices that will continue to automatically switch when it goes from "not plugged in" to "plugged in".

A.6: Now that we are able to identify often used preferred devices we could then implement a feature to turn off switching to the most recent device when an audio output device with a generic device name that is not in the list of recognized preferred audio devices goes from "not plugged in" to "plugged in".. This would be in System > Sound menu a checkbox next to some text that says "Disable automatic switching to newly recognized audio devices" and would be persistent with reboot, Windows software updates etc.

This is a solution with that would enable users to prevent the annoying feature of switching to undesired and often unexpected new sound devices (e.g. I don't think most people want to switch to a video monitor's audio system by default when they plug their laptop into a dock). And it preserves the ability to switch to certain preferred devices when they go from "not plugged in" to "plugged in".

Also note using the terminology "not plugged in" instead of "recognized" because now the devices are considered recognized in this special new list, but only by their generic device name. And sometimes we refer to a newly plugged in device as being "recognized" but in this case that's not what I'm talking about. Anyway, I think the suggested implementation path should be clear from the notes above.

No, I just replied to the wrong text. I deleted it. I keep getting notification emails for this feed even though I unsubscribed a year ago, & the comment the email is notifying me about, isn't the comment I'm linked to when I hit the reply tab, & I then simply didn't notice the header when I loaded in to comment. This has happened before. As far as your comments go, what is actually relative to remark on anyway, I won't touch hdmi, It's inferior to its peers & the loss of quality & limitations from it's small size make it useless to me. As far as Windows always defaulting to the last device I guess that's its default nature, & it clearly shouldn't be, but you can absolutely change it w/a sound card. I have devices that will always take priority no matter what is plugged in before or after. I can have multiple independent audio streams PC/Audio Card/ Unlimited virtual, & no audio device plugged in will ever take preference from them or anything streaming audio thru them. With most things audio on PC, the solution is likely a sound card, but you shouldn't have to spend $100 to fix these issues.

Soundcard would not be the solution either. As windows would still default to another device say bluetooth audio, or wireless headset. All adding a sound card would do is add another audio device. If internal you need to be sure you have the slot and are confident in installing. External it's another plug and play audio device that windows will treat like everything else. Basically it would have to have an installed driver that supersedes windows default audio behavior and allows you that control, which yes there could be certain cards with the included drivers. Still as you said this should not be required. As it stands most onboard cards are realtek based which has had decent audio control drivers in the past.