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How to stop bluetooth auto starting

26K views 19 replies 10 participants last post by  corinnem  
#1 ·
2015 premium

The following pertains to having the audio source set to bluetooth.

Everytime I start the car it starts playing mp3 podcasts.

The phone has auto bluetooth playing turned off and that works. If I'm walking about with an earpiece and turn the earphone on, nothing happens until I start playing on the phone.

But it automatically starts as soon as I start the car. I can turn it off (actually pause) at the phone or the car but if I stop at the gas station, two minutes later when I start the car again a podcast will start again. Really annoying when I have passengers with me. Particularly when I want to keep bluetooth on because I'm using it for navigation with the phone.

Hoping to find a setting to stop the outback from auto starting as it is the only bluetooth device doing this with the current phone settings
 
#4 ·
Yes I have that too and it's set to off. It doesn't happen when I connect a different bluetooth device (i.e. earpiece). Only when it's the car.


But found out something else today. Got a couple calls while on the road and every time I hung up, the car would start playing the MP3 too.


I originally thought it would be the phone but best I can tell the settings are OK there. Particularly confident given that other bluetooth devices are not causing the problem.


Guess I could try deleting the current default app and see if it stops.
 
#6 ·
I have turned off auto start when connecting/disconnecting headsets. And that seems to be working correctly with my bluetooth headset. It doesn't start until I start it from the phone. In fact, although the controls via bluetooth are enabled, they don't work until I start the mp3 from the phone.


But the Outback doesn't do that. I have a couple mp3 players on the phone (pixel 3) The google music that is factory installed, winamp, and poweramp.



When I start the car and the phone connects and plays, you can't actually see an app running so it must be running in the background. To verify that it was poweramp, I let it do its thing (auto start), then started up poweramp, then killed it. The player stopped.


Then I uninstalled poweramp. Now the same behavior seems to happening with google music player. I can't uninstall that as it's a system app.


My current conclusion is that it is the Outback or it is the phone at large given that the same behavior occurs across apps.


I think my next step is to try to duplicate the behavior on an older android phone. If it still happens, I guess that doesn't prove anything but the pixel is android 9 and the older phone is 4.4 so it would be long standing behavior. Or something in the outbakc.
 
#7 ·
There are settings. And More Settings.

On my 2017 Limited there are settings in the InfoTainment system.


From the Main Menu you select Settings.

Then Bluetooth.

Select the device you want to change settings.

Disconnect as audio device.


Then There are phone settings.

On my Cheap Android phone.

Go to Settings.

Select Bluetooth

Select SUBARU BT

Settings and uncheck Media audio.


This will disable all media/audio feeds from your phone.

Probably will disable your 'Navigation' from your phone.
 

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#8 ·
On my 2017 Limited there are settings in the InfoTainment system.


From the Main Menu you select Settings.

Then Bluetooth.

Select the device you want to change settings.

Disconnect as audio device.


Then There are phone settings.

On my Cheap Android phone.

Go to Settings.

Select Bluetooth

Select SUBARU BT

Settings and uncheck Media audio.


This will disable all media/audio feeds from your phone.

Probably will disable your 'Navigation' from your phone.



If I understand you, I don't think that is what I want. I want the audio from the phone probably most of the time as I do listen to podcasts when I'm alone. I just don't want the auto starting. It gets pretty annoying. I was driving back from MA (youngest brother's 65 birthday) on Sunday. We stopped for coffee. Stopped for gas. All the kids called for father's day. Every stop and phone call, the stupid thing would start up again. And I keep the display on vehicle monitor so I'd have to go back to audio and hit the pause, then switch back to vehicle monitor.

I also use my phone for navigation, so that would be another problem (don't have Subaru nav). The audio telling you a turn is coming up is better than having to look at the display and while I can hear the phone, it does work better with the sound coming through the car.


Basically, I'd like the phone to connect. At that point, phone calls through the Sub should happen but nothing else. I'll start navigation (on the phone) if/when I want it. And same for podcasts. But now, it restarts the podcasts even after I hang up the phone which is a setting I know I have turned off.

Learned something else today. Looks like the evil finger is pointing at the phone in general and not the app. I took my previous phone (on kitkat 4.4) and it doesn't seem to be doing this. Only one short trip to the store, so two starts, but initially it seems to operate OK with poweramp. I think the poweramp is an older version. At least it looks different so I'll have to check for updates, compare settings, etc. as well as try it a few more times to be sure it is working as desired.


If I find an answer to this miscreant phone (Pixel 3), I'll post.
 
#10 ·
Don't have any problems with connectivity, bluetooth, etc. Just the dang autostart. I have concluded it is the phone in general and apparently nothing I can do about it. The phone just got an update so that won't help


As stated earlier, the older phone doesn't exhibit the same behavior using the same app. My spouse got a new hybrid camry a few months ago and I hadn't paired it. But I did on Thursday and it does the same thing there. Just starts playing whatever was last played by the mp3 player.


I'm just incredulous that google would do something like that and not have any way to turn it off. Even worse, they had something like a $300 rebate if you took a 2 year so I'm stuck for another 18 months or so. I've pretty much kept my cell phones past the bitter end but probably not with this one. And I'll probably head back to samsung.
 
#12 ·
My problem is only bluetooth. If I turn the radio/audio off, nothing comes on. By far the biggest problem is wanting to use the phone for navigation through the head unit and not play the podcasts. I'd be willing to click off something whenever I wanted it to stop and click it back on when I wanted it to work again, but doesn't appear there is anything like that.
 
#17 ·
I've had this problem for 4 years and it is the #1 daily annoyance I have with this car. There's nothing I can do to consistently make it stop. The system (2016 non-HK) AGGRESSIVELY pumps in noise at every possible opportunity. It drives me f**king bananas. It is absolutely maddening, especially with two people using the car's bluetooth.

Unfortunately I think you're just out of luck.

Sometimes you can get it to stop for a while with the right combo of iphone app settings, killing the right iphone apps, and turning off the car radio.

But it never lasts, and pretty soon the car starts playing music off my wife's phone over bluetooth when I pull up to the house, and then again when I leave, until I get out of range, but then starts again for another 20 seconds as I pass the house again on the main road a block over. Of course once I'm off and going and clear of the intermittent range, I might want to listen to something, but it can't pair while in Drive so I have to either suffer in silence or pull over to fix it, which I almost never do since I make lots of short trips a day and it isn't worth the hassle to maybe hear two songs before I get where I'm going.

Even with just one phone, it's super obnoxious. If it's connected and there is ANY app open that can play media, it will start playing immediately. I don't know how many times I've killed iTunes, and Spotify, and Prime Music, and two different podcast apps, all to avoid automatic brain rattling and have a quiet cup of coffee on the way in to work, just to have some Youtube that I opened a month ago start blasting over my sound system.

I passionately hate the Bluetooth audio setup on this system. It boggles my mind that there's no easy setting for "stay connected but don't play music unless I tell you to."
 
#18 ·
I've had this problem for 4 years and it is the #1 daily annoyance I have with this car. There's nothing I can do to consistently make it stop. The system (2016 non-HK) AGGRESSIVELY pumps in noise at every possible opportunity. It drives me f**king bananas. It is absolutely maddening, especially with two people using the car's bluetooth.

Unfortunately I think you're just out of luck.

Sometimes you can get it to stop for a while with the right combo of iphone app settings, killing the right iphone apps, and turning off the car radio.

But it never lasts, and pretty soon the car starts playing music off my wife's phone over bluetooth when I pull up to the house, and then again when I leave, until I get out of range, but then starts again for another 20 seconds as I pass the house again on the main road a block over. Of course once I'm off and going and clear of the intermittent range, I might want to listen to something, but it can't pair while in Drive so I have to either suffer in silence or pull over to fix it, which I almost never do since I make lots of short trips a day and it isn't worth the hassle to maybe hear two songs before I get where I'm going.

Even with just one phone, it's super obnoxious. If it's connected and there is ANY app open that can play media, it will start playing immediately. I don't know how many times I've killed iTunes, and Spotify, and Prime Music, and two different podcast apps, all to avoid automatic brain rattling and have a quiet cup of coffee on the way in to work, just to have some Youtube that I opened a month ago start blasting over my sound system.

I passionately hate the Bluetooth audio setup on this system. It boggles my mind that there's no easy setting for "stay connected but don't play music unless I tell you to."

pretty much my feelings except for the go to work part. Been retired for almost a decade now. So I have more leisure time to be annoyed at it.


But as I noted further up, it's a multi-manurfacutrer conspiracy. It does it on my wife's 2019 camry hybrid too. But it doesn't happen with my old samsung phone. Don't know about her iphone as it is not paired in my car.



But I do note, it doesn't require an open app for me. I can kill all apps, reboot the phone and it still does it. I had auto disconnect on but auto resume off on poweramp and that didn't help.


Apparently some like it. When I complained to my son, he thought it was a good feature and would want it. Well at least I can console myself with the thought that the girls were raised right.
 
#19 ·
I agree with what's said here, this is the MOST frustrating thing on the planet. What engineer thought of this and didn't make it configurable is beyond me. And, especially now that everyone is working from home, when someone uses our Outback to go get groceries, and someone is in the middle of a call, the call automatically transfers to the car even though I'm not in the car!! There has got to be a way to prevent this. Please, Subaru or someone, fix this!
 
#20 ·
We have a 2015 Subaru Outback 3.6L and it does it with a Galaxy S10+. The annoyance has gotten to the stage where my husband says he refuses to buy another Subaru. I concur. For all the benefit a Subaru has in the north country, auto stating an app that isn't even open and playing it is beyond maddening. Subaru: fix it or you'll lose customers.