How to use a Samsung Galaxy S9 with two Bluetooth devices at a time

We've all tried to share what we're listening to with someone. We'll split earbuds with our partner while watching a movie on a flight, and it seems romantic, right? Then reality sets in, and it's just awkward. It's cramped. It's also gross because you're sharing nasty earbuds.
There's a better way to share your listening, and you can both have your own headphones for it. It's called Dual Audio, and it's one of the best Samsung Galaxy S9 features you've never heard about — even though it was introduced last year on the Galaxy S8, S8+ and Galaxy Note 8.
Here's how it works.
Dual Audio allows you to send your media audio to two different Bluetooth devices at once. This means that not only can you use two pairs of headphones at one time, but you get to ditch the wires, too! After pairing both Bluetooth headphones to your Samsung Galaxy S9, you just need to enable Dual Audio so that both phones can receive the media audio at once.
- Open Settings.
- Tap Connections.
- Tap Bluetooth.
- Tap the three-dot menu icon in the top right corner of the screen.
- Tap Dual audio
- Tap the toggle in the top right corner of the Dual audio page.
It's worth noting that there may be some slight differences in audio between two headphones, such as slight delay on one or the other. Samsung doesn't have any calibration tools to fix this, the way Google's Chromecast Audio does, so it probably won't work well if you use it with two speakers in the same room. The primary function here is to let two Bluetooth headphones hear what you're listening to at the same time, like if you're watching a movie on a flight or jamming out to Spotify.
Even if you don't plan to share your Bluetooth with anyone else, having Dual Audio can be useful to keep on. For instance, if you forget to turn off your Bluetooth headphones before getting into the car, Dual Audio can let the music play over both your head unit and the headphones you don't want to dig out of your backpack.
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Ara Wagoner was a staff writer at Android Central. She themes phones and pokes YouTube Music with a stick. When she's not writing about cases, Chromebooks, or customization, she's wandering around Walt Disney World. If you see her without headphones, RUN. You can follow her on Twitter at @arawagco.
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Cool feature. Looks like my S8+ has it too
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Why hide these features? Makes no sense. All the features listed including ringtone and volume sync are useful. Make them visual despite having the Bluetooth turned on and let these features activate once Bluetooth is on...
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Actually Volume Sync in particular can screw a lot of things up if you don't know it's enabled. Volume Sync also doesn't work well on all devices (for instance, in my car it made finding a comfortable volume damn near impossible, and in my Bluetooth receiver in the bedroom was always too soft with it on). Dual Audio being on by default would be slightly nice, but it could get confusing, especially as only media audio can be sent to two devices, not call audio, so while both headphones are connected, only one can be used for calls or commands.
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Thought everyone knew about this? Samsung has had it for years.
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You'd think everyone would know, but since it's kind of hiding in Bluetooth settings, it slips under the radar. But yeah, we've had it for a while now.
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This feature should be well know, it was on the Samsung wed sight advertising for S8 as well as the litreture that came with the phone. I've used it reguraly at work with 2 Bose speaker, it was one of the main reason I purchased an S8,
The music does sync after about a minute of play time.
There was talk as well that the S8 had the new Bluetooth chip build in that would allow for true dual streaming protical when the new Bluetooth update was released. -
A lot of things should be well known, but that doesn't mean they are. It's been in a few Samsung commercials, true, but not everyone reads the manual.
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Thank you for this! I pride myself on knowing every feature of my phone and somehow this slipped me by.
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This one was one of the most amazing features that I thought my S8+ had back when I got it... But then I only used once.. Gotta love Bluetooth 5.0
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I noticed a serious range Drop in bluthooth. Coming from galaxy-s7-edge. Clearing Bluetooth cache didn't help.
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"Then reality sets in, and it's just awkward. It's cramped. It's also gross because you're sharing nasty earbuds." I know he's "nasty"...☺
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What Samsung Theme are you using Ara?
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what the hell....All this time I was trying to find ways to do that and I had to read an article on the S9 to find out it had been introduced on my Note 8...well... :o
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What are those headphones in the picture? They kind of look like wireless versions of my favorite old Sony ear clip headphones.