Apple TV, Settings, Remotes and Devices, Bluetooth, set Suggest Nearby Airpods to Off

This was bugging me for a while. My Airpods (latest Airpod Pros) would disconnect unexpectedly from my Apple TV (latest gen).

It was fairly predictable in that they’d disconnect when I finished one episode and let it automatically start the next episode (Max and Peacock for sure it’d happen then, I think other apps too), or with an app that has ads such as Tubi, when it would switch to an ad, the Airpods would disconnect. It’s almost like some audio format change was causing the disconnect.

Did some digging, found others fixed it by disabling Suggest Nearby Airpods, and sure enough, that immediately fixed it for me. Zero disconnects since disabling that. And this was mentioned in years-old threads, so it isn’t a new problem, but Apple has yet to get around to fixing the bug with the Suggest Nearby Airpods feature that causes Airpods to disconnect unexpectedly.

That feature simplifies pairing, but once Airpods are paired, I’m not aware of any benefit it provides. I’m not missing anything by having it disabled.