Most gadgets can only send sound to a single device, especially if we’re talking about wireless transmissions. Macs weren’t any different, but that changes now! With PairPods, sharing audio via Bluetooth is a breeze.
Why Would I Want To Send Bluetooth Audio to Multiple Devices?
If you’ve ever tried to watch a movie with someone on a long trip, you know this struggle. You either have to watch it on mute, to avoid bothering other passengers, or share a single pair of earbuds.
Sound systems can suffer from a similar problem. If you want to, say, have a party with friends and use each one’s Bluetooth speakers, it’s simply not possible. Or was, actually, if you have a Mac.
It’s not that phones and computers can’t connect to multiple Bluetooth devices at once. You can, in fact, use it with a keyboard, a mouse, headphones, and so on. What’s not possible is transmitting audio to more than one device.
PairPods: Sending Audio From Your Mac to Multiple Bluetooth Devices
PairPods changes that. The app works as a simple icon that lives on your menu bar. Click it, and you’ll be able to select which devices to send the audio to. They need to be paired as usual, in System Settings > Bluetooth, before appearing on PairPods.
If they’re connected successfully, they’ll appear on the menu bar icon for Bluetooth headphones and earbuds. Once everything is set up correctly, simply click the PairPods menu bar icon and select Share Audio.
The technique used by PairPods to work its magic isn’t new. The app creates a second (virtual) audio interface, and uses it to route audio to both devices. However, PairPods simplifies the process, reducing it to just two clicks instead of a dozen complex configuration steps.
PairPods is completely free, with no subscription, ads, or premium tiers. It supports macOS 14 Sonoma and higher, though the developer wants to limit it to macOS 13 Ventura.
And, to give you some additional peace of mind, the app is fully open source. You can download the code and files on PairPods’ GitHub page and build it yourself.
The app has a single limitation, which is that it only allows sharing your Mac’s audio to two Bluetooth devices. According to the PairPods FAQ, this is intentional, to make development simpler and avoid future issues.
Listening to music or watching movies on a phone or computer with multiple Bluetooth audio devices is a particular case. It’s not such an extreme use case that it wouldn’t be worth keeping the app around just in case. It only weighs 4MB, after all. And you get the added benefit of the cutest app icon anyone has seen in recent times.