Bluetooth headphones spell out Windows PC's name letter-by-letter instead of pronouncing it as words

Around On Ear Headphones
1

Bose product name

Bose QuietComfort 35 Series II

 

Country

US

 

Firmware Version

4.8.1

App Version

iOS app version 14.0

What devices were you using that were affected and what version are they on

Dell XPS 15" 9570 laptop running Windows 10

 

Detailed description of the issue and steps to reproduce

When connecting my Bose QC35 II Bluetooth headphones to my Windows PC, the headphones spell out Windows PC's name letter-by-letter instead of pronouncing it as words like it does with MacBook or iPhone names.

 

What environment do you experience the issue in?

Everywhere.

 

When did you start to experience the issue? Did it work correctly previously?

I've experienced this problem since I purchased these headphones in 2017.

 

Any troubleshooting steps you took

My MacBook laptop's name is "Chris's MacBook". My iPhone's name is "Chris's iPhone". When my Bose headphones connect to those devices' Bluetooth, the headphones pronounce those device names correctly as words.

 

When my headphones connect to my Windows laptop, however, the headphones spell out the Windows laptop's name letter-by-letter: "C. H. R. I. S. W. I. N. D. O. W. S. L. A. P. T. O. P." This is extremely annoying because the spelling takes a very long time and I have to listen to it multiple times a day, every day.

 

It doesn't matter what I name my Windows laptop. I tried renaming my Windows laptop to "Chris's iPhone" because I know the headphones "know" how to pronounce that name as words. But they still spell out the name, so I know this bug is not that the headphones can pronounce some words but not others.

 

I found some old posts in this forum about this Windows problem from 2018, but the problem has not been resolved. I am extremely surprised this bug has persisted for 3 years. Does no one at Bose use Windows PCs? Does no one at Microsoft use Bose headphones?

2

This is the solution for this problem which I have copied with slight adaptations from a post on Reddit by user “madallday”: On your Windows PC run Device Manager. Expand the Bluetooth section. You will see several items, some are external devices your computer knows about, but one of them will be the internal device that represents your Bluetooth driver source. On my HP small form factor desktop it is “Generic Bluetooth Radio”. Another common entry is “Intel(R) Wireless Bluetooth(R)”. Right click and choose Properties. You should see an “Advanced” tab. On that tab, you should see “Name” with a field that is populated with the name of your computer, likely in all caps e.g. “CHRIS’S PC”. Rename it to title case i.e. “Chris’s PC”. Any new Bose devices connected should now say “Chris’s PC” rather than “C.H.R.I.S.S.P.C.”. This means you need to get your Bose device to forget about the PC (not the other way around). Using the Bose app on your mobile phone should be able to let you do that.