AirPods Max unwanted pausing when taking off headphones

[Edd70]

I‘ve only had these headphones for a couple weeks so still figuring things out. I use them with an Apple TV 4K (2nd gen). I understand the usefulness of the video pausing when removing the headphones but there’s a specific instance that it’s not desired for me.

Peacock has live channels with commercials I can’t skip. Perfect time to take off the headphones and give my ears a break. The video pauses per the headphone design. But I want it to continue and get through the commercial. So I press play on the ATV remote and the video refuses to play. I have to wait about 30 seconds, then it plays on its own and turns on sound through the sound bar, which is not desired certain times I’m trying to watch quietly.

So I have to sit and wait for it to play and mute the sound bar to stay quiet. I can’t pre-mute it during that 30 second period because it’s still obeying the headphones during that time.

This is a pretty specific use case because of the commercials on a streaming service but I think the glaring problem here is that it doesn’t obey the remote command to continue playing. It’s an interesting case of Apple’s tight integration causing an issue.

Is there a setting that I’m missing?

 

[ignatius345]

Yeah, the setting for this is "automatic head detection". I don't know if you can change it on Apple TV. Do you have an iPhone you use them with as well? If so, it's easy to switch this off in Settings on iOS. Once you do, audio and video should keep playing when you take the headphones off.

 

[Edd70]

Yeah, the setting for this is "automatic head detection". I don't know if you can change it on Apple TV. Do you have an iPhone you use them with as well? If so, it's easy to switch this off in Settings on iOS. Once you do, audio and video should keep playing when you take the headphones off.

Thanks for that. I did turn it off and that works for this use case. Causes another issue I won’t get into but don’t think I can be satisfied here.