This is a situation I came to regularly prior to iOS 14…

I’m listening to a podcast with iPhone using AirPods. I sit down to watch something on iPad in YouTube… all the while, AirPods are playing my podcast still. I press play on a video in YouTube and the audio comes out of iPad while AirPods are still playing the podcast from iPhone, none the wiser. Many months ago, I created a Shortcut that will switch the playback location on device to AirPods. I invoke the Shortcut and now my AirPods are playing the audio from the video that’s on iPad.

Now, enter iOS 14 with “automatic switching”. From Apple:

Seamlessly move between devices without manually switching your AirPods. If you finish a phone call on your iPhone and pick up your iPad to watch a movie, AirPods automatically switch over.

Let’s try that same situation…

Instead of the audio coming from both sources, the audio being piped into AirPods Pro is automatically switched from the podcast on iPhone to YouTube on iPad. This is precisely what I’d expect in this situation. Now… when I’m done in YouTube, the audio doesn’t switch back… again, I don’t expect it to – especially if what I was previously watching/listening to was long, that’d be jarring to switch back to the podcast and have it resume.

There are some infrequent situations where I’d prefer to watch a YouTube video on iPad without hearing the audio… in those situations, I can press the notification and have the audio switch back to the podcast on iPhone.