I hate Bluetooth. I hate how audio is controlled on our modern devices. Case in point: I'm working in my shop. I have my Spotify playlist up on my phone, and am connected via Bluetooth to my speaker, so I have music playing. If a call comes in, it projects over the Bluetooth speaker, which is in no way a useful or valuable place to have phone calls sent. Or I take a break for a minute to sit down and have some water, and play a game on my phone. And now that game is bring projected over the sound of the music through the Bluetooth speaker. Why can't I just have music sent to the Bluetooth speaker, and all other audio routed through my phone's built-in speaker? What about my car? I connect to my car's entertainment system via Bluetooth, and I listen to podcasts and music while driving. But every single notification that comes in pads my audio 25%, so I miss what the podcasters are saying. If I get multiple notifications in a row, I can miss a LOT of information. Or maybe I want to use my AirPods, instead of the car's stereo system... but nope. Trying to get the car to release its Bluetooth lock on my iPhone is impossible to do when driving. And even when I do get the audio re-routed to my AirPods, if a call comes in, my phone disconnects from my AirPods, reconnects to the car stereo, and plays the call over the stereo system! Fixes. "Fixing" these problems is actually two different solutions to two different problems; one fix is possible, the other impossible. The first option is to have some sort of built-in mixer into the OS, that allows me to specifically route specific app outputs to different places. So, send Spotify output to the Bluetooth connected device (speaker in the shop, or car stereo, for example) and send all other audio through the phone's built-in speaker. The second option is to have multiple outputs available via Bluetooth. So I can send Spotify to my job site boombox, and phone to my AirPods. This can't happen, because Bluetooth cannot address more than one destination; there can be only one Bluetooth device connected at a time. Most of the time now, I just drive with no audio at all. It's just less annoying to have to deal with these asinine design flaws in "modern" technology products. Waaaah. (But hey ... at least I'm not trying to avoid conscription gangs and looking at leaving my homeland for good and becoming an exile from my own country. (Yet.)
For the notifications while driving and listening.. I recall at some point while tinkering with an older, rooted, android phone - I could set my phone to automatically turn those notifications off, specifically when I was connected to something via bluetooth. Once disconnected from bluetooth the phone switched notifications back on. I used some kind of app akin to If This Then That, but it's name eludes me now. I guess fucking with an iPhone is far less appealing to achieve something similar! Not sure why I don't have that setup on my current phone and car. Probably laziness.
Yeah. The iPhone OS has a similar function called "profiles", that you can configure for this purpose. But you need to set it up, and remember to turn it on - and off! - and do so BEFORE you get in your car and head out. I just don't sit on the couch watching TV thinking, "oh geez, I should configure my iPhone Profile for driving so my podcast doesn't get interrupted when I go driving on Thursday...." I'm just being grumpy/lazy. Ignore me.
iOS and Android both handle this most elegantly through Carplay/Android Auto. It's possible to run Android Auto on an android not connected to a car stereo. It's not possible to run Carplay. Android Auto basically turns your phone into Android Auto and mirrors it to the car's display, while Carplay is an auxiliary screen for iOS. In each case the different apps in the car stereo modes allow you to set whatever level of annoyance you want to deal with. Doesn't help you with your boom box, I know. Frankly it's all been downhill since this guy.
1) Bluetooth sucks. It's a protocol designed to transmit Danish business cards. Even 20-odd years later it's an inferior audio protocol. 2) Under Bluetooth settings, per device, you can set whether or not the phone goes there. 3) Connecting your phone to your car's bluetooth sucks. Don't buy a car that lacks Android Auto & Carplay or lacks a DIN or double-DIN stereo. My wife's Fit fails all these tests but it also has an audio in jack. 4) That said, notifications can be silenced. It involves a lot of fiddle-fucking in the preferences to get it to work but in general, flipping the STFU switch on the side of an iPhone radically improves life. 5) on an iPhone call screen, pressing the "source" button will swap the call to wherever you want it to go. In a car that shouldn't be AirPods. It's a moving violation. 6) Your phone's operating system does have a mixer. It also has a matrix router. However, that mixer/router doesn't have a handy-dandy GUI, it has a bunch of if/then statements and individual volume controls. And yes - Bluetooth is only one destination, and that is appropriate because Bluetooth sucks balls. These are all surmountable problems. You just have to start from the standpoint of "I can't be the only person this bugs the shit out of. Surely other people have addressed this ridiculously annoying issue." To be fair to device manufacturers, most every device manufacturer has gone "the less control we give to car manufacturers the better." Carplay/Android Auto are vastly better experiences than anything any car company or stereo manufacturer can come up with. They're imperfect? But substantially more livable than Chevy.
Yeah, what I need to do is spend a couple hours configuring "Profiles" in the new iOS for every conceivable situation where I would want Audio A going out there and Audio B going out there and THOSE particular notifications silenced when I am in Profile X mode but allow other notifications, and then have Profile Y configured for when I'm in my shop, and and and... ... and using AirPods in the car is illegal? How you supposed to do hands-free in a pre-2017 vehicle?!? (Rhetorical question.) And yeah, I'd buy a new car with ApplePlay or whatever it's called, but they stopped making my car in 2015 and nobody has come up with its equal yet. I'm taking a week off next week. I've decided I'll make time to fix all my technology issues then... which include getting my new fiber internet router to get signal to the WHOLE house and back yard, and upgrading my OS and Native Instruments on my Mac Mini, and setting up Profiles on my phone for the common use cases I have, and getting Moxie set up and starting to use her FluentPet buttons so she can demand more treats from me, and updating all the services that are whinging at me because I changed my credit card number.... And maybe I'll install my spiral staircase on Wednesday when the new steps arrive...
Like Devac mentions, you can send audio to different devices in Windows. I'll stream music or movies to my stereo and keep system sounds on the laptop. Android pauses audio during notifications, I'm sure I'd be annoyed to driving and really want to rewind to hear what I missed if it just muted during notifications. I know that they always talk about making Bluetooth work better with multiple streams and devices every standards update but it's always aspirational.
iOS allows me to set up Profiles for whatever I am doing, which is effectively a buncha presets that I can automatically switch between, like weapon-switching in my favorite game. Problem is, I have to set it all up. And then I need to remember to change my Profile. Recently I went three days without realizing my phone was on Silent mode.... so yeah... I may just be too old for modern technology. :-)
I know just about nothing about Apple ecosystem, but there's exactly that in Windows called App Volume and Device Preferences. The article mentions 3rd party apps only for older system versions, but I'd suspect someone wrote something like that for iOS/whatever.The first option is to have some sort of built-in mixer into the OS, that allows me to specifically route specific app outputs to different places. So, send Spotify output to the Bluetooth connected device (speaker in the shop, or car stereo, for example) and send all other audio through the phone's built-in speaker.
I figured out how to do it on my shitty bargain-bin Alcatel with ancient Android, so there likely is a solution less tedious than your profile setups. Almost willing to bet there's already something like this or better, hidden behind even less-specific name.
... and that auto manufacturers release ONE version of software for their head units, and then ignore any software updates forever. Oh wait. That's not right. I can get a software update for the head unit in my 2015 Chevy... for $632. (Literally sticking in a USB, clicking a button, and waiting for the update to complete. And it is over $600.)