You Can Connect Two Bluetooth Headsets to Your Mac at the Same Time
Want to watch a movie with a friend on your Mac? Perhaps you’re stuck on a long flight or, like me, your MacBook Air speakers are broken. Either way, you’ll be glad to know that the Mac has a built-in feature that can combine several different audio outputs—no third-party app required. You can easily use two sets of Bluetooth headphones to listen to the same sound without noticeable audio drift or lag.
First, connect both devices to Bluetooth.
The first step is to connect both devices to your Mac using Bluetooth. You can do this by going to Control Center > Bluetooth .
If your devices are not yet paired, you won’t see them there. In this case, go to System Settings > Bluetooth and connect your headphones to your Mac first.
Combine two audio outputs
To begin the process, open the Audio MIDI Setup application. You’ll find this in the Applications / Utilities section of the Finder app. Or you can use Spotlight Search or Launchpad to find and open the app.
Click the Plus button in the lower left corner of the window and select the Create a device with multiple outputs option.
Here you will see all connected devices. Select the two devices you want to use to play media. You can select one of the devices as your primary device at the top. The app will automatically enable Drift Correction for the secondary device to ensure that the audio on both devices is perfectly in sync.
Then double-click the multi-output device name in the sidebar to rename it something you can easily remember. To test this now, Control-click the group and select the Use this device for audio output option. The audio output will instantly switch to a pair of headphones.
But there’s a better way to switch to a pair of headphones—using the Sound menu in Control Center.
Click the Control Center icon in the menu bar and select the Devices menu under Sound (the Sound menu can be dragged to the menu bar for easier access).
Here, select the newly created audio pair. If this is your first time, select the “Multiple Output Device” option. It will now be updated with the name of your user group, making it much easier to select output next time.
Next time you’re ready to listen in the same configuration, remember to first pair the two devices separately in the Bluetooth menu, and then select them as a pair in the Sound menu (they won’t be listed as a pair directly in the Sound menu ). Bluetooth menu, for some reason).