How to easily pair your Bluetooth headphones with the Nintendo Switch

Pairing Bluetooth headphones with Nintendo Switch (Image via Nintendo)
Pairing Bluetooth headphones with Nintendo Switch (Image via Nintendo)

Although it's been almost six years since its official launch, the Nintendo Switch is considered to be one of the best handheld consoles on the market today. With an ever-expanding library of games and portability, the device is as popular as ever, with plenty of Nintendo fans looking to get their hands on it even today.

With new users joining the Nintendo family, there has been a fair amount of curiosity regarding some of the features that this console offers. One such query is how one would go about pairing Bluetooth headphones with the popular device.

Bluetooth headphone compatibility wasn't a feature that the Switch was officially released with, taking the developers four years and the 13.0 patch system update to finally introduce it. Today’s guide will go over all the necessary steps that you must take to pair your Bluetooth headphones with the Nintendo Switch.


Pairing Bluetooth headphones with Nintendo Switch

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To pair your Bluetooth headphones with the Switch, Switch Lite, or Switch OLED, you must follow these steps:

  • Ensure that the headphones you want to pair have their pairing mode enabled. If this isn't enabled, it won't be able to connect with your console. Once that is done, you will then need to make your way to the System Settings of your Nintendo Switch.
  • There, you will find an option that reads Bluetooth Audio, which will further have the option to Pair Device. After clicking on this option, a list of available devices that can you connect to will pop. Here, you will need to select the Bluetooth name of the headphones that you want to pair with the console.
  • After selecting it, the Switch will automatically pair with the headphones.

If you're having issues with the Bluetooth where the device name is not showing up, then you'll likely need to update your Nintendo Switch to the latest version. You can do so by simply heading to the System Update option from the System Settings of the Home Menu.


Notable performance issues when pairing Bluetooth Headphones with the Nintendo Switch

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While the Switch does allow you to pair Bluetooth headphones with it, there's still a fair amount of performance issues that you will need to be aware of if you're looking to use a wireless audio device with the console.

First off, if you are pairing a Bluetooth audio device with the Nintendo Switch, then the number of controllers that you can connect to the console will be reduced from eight to two. While the audio will be just fine, it’s highly likely that the microphone on that particular device won't work.

Additionally, based on the brand and model of the headphones that you are using, there may be a fair bit of audio latency. Fortunately, this is a major issue that the developers will be looking to patch out in future updates and introduce better features for compatibility. It should be noted that the Switch can only connect to one audio device at a time and does not support multiple pairings at the same time.

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