Connecting Your Mac to Multiple Bluetooth Speakers Is Surprisingly Easy.
Whether you’re throwing a party or just cleaning the house, sometimes it’s nice to have sound in multiple rooms. You could run wires throughout the house or buy a multi-room audio system, but if you have a Mac, you don’t have to.
There’s a feature that lets you stream audio from your Mac to multiple speakers, including Bluetooth. This feature, however, is a bit obscure—it’s not available in System Preferences or anywhere else.
No, to send audio to multiple devices on your Mac, you need to open the Audio MIDI Setup application, which you can find using Spotlight or by going to Applications > Utilities in Finder.
Open the app and tap the “+” button in the lower left corner, then tap “Create Multi-Output Device.” You’ll see a list of all audio devices, including built-in speakers, all connected wired audio outputs, all Airplay-compatible devices on your network, and all Bluetooth devices with audio support.
Check as many boxes as you want. Optionally, you can name your merged audio device by long-pressing the current name in the left sidebar. You can then switch to the new merged audio device by clicking the audio icon in the menu bar and selecting it.
I recommend playing some music and testing by adding and removing devices. I got the best results by testing one device wired to my Mac and the other via Bluetooth. Multiple Bluetooth devices tended to quickly become out of sync, although sync issues can be resolved by checking the “Drift Correction” box for wireless devices.
It’s not a perfect replacement for a full-fledged multi-room audio system, but it works surprisingly well without the need to buy anything, run wires in the walls, or even purchase software. Give it a try the next time you want to stroll around the house and listen to music.