The beta for Android 11 is officially rolling out today and it includes a media switcher tool that’s ridiculously easy to use. Among other things.
With the beta now starting to hit Pixel devices, plenty of new features and tweaks are going to start coming out of the woodwork, but if you listen to music a lot on your phone then the media switcher is probably going to be one of your favorite things.
The purpose of this tool is so that users can swap between different Bluetooth devices that media is playing through. For example, if you have a pair of Bluetooth earbuds in when you walk into the house but then want to swap the media playing to a Bluetooth speaker.
The media switcher in the Android 11 beta requires developer options
To get this working you’ll need to enable developer options first. You can find this in the settings after you’ve enabled it.
You will also need to enable the media resumption feature in the developer options menu. As this is tied directly to the media switcher button. Once you have media resumption enabled, this will place the media playback controls in your quick settings menu.
It’s on these media controls where you will find the new button to swap between different Bluetooth devices. If your phone is paired to more than one at a time that is.
You’ll see all available devices to swap to
When you look at your media controls in the quick settings menu, the new button for swapping will show your currently connected device.
Tapping that button will then bring up a menu that slides in from the bottom of the screen. It will display all available devices that your paired to. Including the one that is currently the connected device.
Simply tap the one you want to switch to and in just a couple of seconds your media will begin playback on that new device. And you can just as easily move it back to earbuds or headphones should you need or want to.
Worth noting is that this doesn’t seem to support Chromecast-enabled or wifi-enabled devices. So don’t expect to see those options when you hit the switcher button. Still, being able to quickly move between Bluetooth devices should make things a breeze.
Then again, this feature will really only be the case if you have multiple devices to swap between. Or if you stream music from your phone at all.
