How to set audio device priority on a Mac
Updated 2026-10-01
A lot of people want the same simple thing: use my AirPods if they are connected, otherwise my Bluetooth speaker, otherwise the Mac's own speakers. There is no setting for that on a Mac, and the settings that look like they might do it do something else.
What macOS does instead
macOS has one rule for choosing your audio device: whatever connected most recently wins. There is no notion of preference, and no way to tell it that one device matters more than another.
So the order your devices get used in is simply the order they happened to connect. Turn on the speaker after the AirPods and the speaker wins. Wake the AirPods after the speaker and they win. Nothing you set beforehand changes that.
Settings that look like priority but are not
System Settings ▸ Sound ▸ Output picks the device to use right now. It is a one-off choice, and the next device to connect replaces it.
Audio MIDI Setup (in Applications ▸ Utilities) has "Use This Device for Sound Output" on each device. That does the same thing as the Sound settings: it changes the current device, not the order.
Audio MIDI Setup can also create a Multi-Output Device, which plays the same audio through several devices at once. That is useful for some setups, but it is the opposite of priority: everything plays everywhere, rather than the best available device playing alone.
For AirPods only, System Settings ▸ Bluetooth has a Connect to This Mac option (open it with the info button next to them, with the AirPods in your ears). Setting it to When Last Connected to This Mac makes them join the Mac less often. It does not rank them against anything else.
Switching by hand, quickly
Until something enforces an order, the fastest manual fix is to Option-click the Sound icon in the menu bar. You get the full output list and can move back in one click. If there is no Sound icon, turn it on under System Settings ▸ Control Centre ▸ Sound.
Getting a real priority list
A priority list needs something running that notices whenever a device connects or disconnects and then picks the highest-ranked one that is actually there. macOS lets apps do exactly that without any special permission, but does not do it itself.
Tunestack is built for this. You drag your devices into order once: AirPods, then the Bluetooth speaker, then the built-in speakers, and it keeps to that order as things come and go. Output and input have separate lists, and picking a device by hand makes it step aside for as long as you choose.