How to Connect Wireless Heaphones: Step

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Your ultimate guide, plus troubleshooting tips, to pairing earbuds with your smartphone or running watch

Wireless headphones are a godsend for music-loving runners. You can finally wave goodbye to tangled wires and buds being tugged from your ears every time you turn your head. However, connecting your headphones to your phone—or music-compatible running watch—can sometimes be confusing. Because, well, Bluetooth can be a fiddly and fickle beast. But don't worry, we’ve got your back. Here's everything you need to know to pair, connect, and unleash the performance-boosting power of music on your run.

The terms pairing and connecting are often used interchangeably to describe hooking up your headphones to a device. But there is a difference.

A bit like the formal introduction, pairing is what happens the first time your device meets your wireless headphones. Your phone, watch, and headphones make a note of each other's names and store that info for next time.

Connecting is like the second or third meeting. Your two devices are already acquainted. They remember each other from that past encounter and can connect faster—often automatically—or at least with a little less tapping. Ideally you pair once, but connect often.

The process for pairing headphones to smartphones and GPS running watches varies. Some Bluetooth headphones helpfully walk you through the initial pairing process in the pattern app. Others leave you to fend for yourself.

In all cases, you’ll need to do two things: put your headphones into pairing mode and ensure Bluetooth is switched on for your watch or phone.

1) Put Your Headphones Into Pairing Mode

Again, there's no standardized method for putting Bluetooth running headphones into pairing mode. But all good headphones provide simple instructions in the user manual and instructions are easy to find online.

In most cases, though, you’ll need to do one of the following to fire up pairing mode:

It's common for the case and/or the headphones to have a flashing LED light that indicates they’re in pairing mode. The headphones may also play an audio message or sound to let you know it's activated, but you’ll need to be wearing them to hear these alerts.

Once you’re done putting your headphones into pairing mode, the next step is to switch on Bluetooth on your smartphone or GPS running watch, find your headphones, and confirm the pairing. Here's how that's done on some of the most popular devices.

PAIRING HEADPHONES TO A SMARTPHONE

Now that you’re paired, even if you switch the headphones off, the name should appear in this list, though it’ll say ‘Not Connected.’ Should you ever want your iPhone to forget your headphones (a.k.a. remove the pairing), you can also tap the ‘i’ in the blue circle to reveal that option. This can be useful sometimes if you have trouble reconnecting your headphones.

PAIRING HEADPHONES TO A RUNNING WATCH

Many of the latest Garmin watches now offer music storage on the watch and offline playback. This means you can connect your running headphones to your watch directly and listen to music as you plod without carrying your phone. Not sure if your Garmin watch supports music? Check out this full list of Garmin watches with music capabilities.

Here's how to pair your Bluetooth headphones with a Garmin watch:

Note: After the initial pairing, on subsequent runs, you’ll need to navigate to the music settings and reconnect your headphones each time. There's no auto-connect.

The Coros Vertix 2 is currently the only Coros watch to offer music storage with room for 32GB of your favorite tracks. If you’re wondering how to download music to your Coros watch, this video explainer offers a great blow-by-blow guide. Here's how to pair your Bluetooth headphones with the Coros Vertix 2:

Note: With the Apple Watch, your headphones should automatically reconnect each time you pop them in to go for a run.

Okay, so you’re back from your run just in time to jump onto that Zoom call. But you need to switch quickly from having your headphones paired to your phone or watch, to your laptop. Should be easy right? Not always.

If you’re a fully paid-up member of the Apple ecosystem with an Apple iPhone, Macbook, and Airpods, this is pretty seamless. Other headphones can sometimes be more fiddly.

Headphones don't tend to support being connected to two devices at once. So depending on the headphones, the running watch, and the laptop you’re using, you may need to disconnect your headphones from one device before they will connect to the other. Here's how you’ll do it.

Once you’ve paired your running headphones initially to your phone, they should automatically connect when you take them out of the case or switch them on. (The good ones do anyway.) That's not necessarily the case with your running watch.

As we mentioned earlier, Bluetooth can also be temperamental. If you’re having trouble connecting, here are a few things to try:

Still no joy? You might need to force your smartphone or watch to forget the pairing and go through that initial set-up process again. Sorry.

Forty-three-time marathon finisher and cofounder of The Run Testers, a YouTube running gear reviews channel, Kieran Alger has been testing the latest running gear for more than a decade. A minor running tech obsessive, he is also "experienced" (okay, old) enough to remember life before Strava, Spotify, and smartphones.

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