How to Get Bluetooth Headphones to Work with Nintendo Switch

So before I get started, let me just state that there is no way for the Nintendo Switch to work by itself with bluetooth headphones. Nintendo just doesn’t have the correct drivers in place for some reason, and I’m not sure if they are planning on making this happen at all. This blog post will simply show you a way that you can get it to work without much hassle by buying a few things and I’ve been using this set up for several weeks now and am very happy with it.

Here is the list of items I use:

And of course the headphones I use with it:

The most important piece of all of this is the Bluetooth Transmitter Receiver. You want to make sure it’s small enough to be able to fit on the back of the Nintendo Switch (and the one I listed does, as well as has room so you can dock the Switch) – but most importantly you want to make sure it has LOW LATENCY. There are lots of cheap transmitter receivers out there, however, some of them won’t have low latency. This causes problems when you are gaming because there will be a small lag in the game sound that can throw you off completely. The lower the latency, the less the lag. With the ones I listed, I can’t even tell if there is so it works great.

From there you just have some velcro strips that stick on to the back of the transmitter and the Switch and you can place the transmitter right on the back of the Switch near the headphone jack. And thus, why I bought the ultrashort interconnect cable. It flushes nicely together without excess cables hanging off the Switch and getting in your way. Everything together is so small it doesn’t add any weight to the device at all while I’m playing it and I don’t even notice it’s there – and I can position the transmitter up high enough that I can also easily dock the Switch with it on.

The only real downside to this method other than having to buy this extra gear to get something simple like this working, is that you will need to occasionally charge the Transmitter into a USB port. I hate having another device to charge, but unfortunately it’s the only way to get something like this to work until Nintendo decides to make bluetooth headphones natively work with their system.

As for the headphones I listed, the Bose Q35s are simply the best headphones I have ever owned in my life. I use them daily for work when I am programming and they are completely invaluable when I’m travelling, especially on a plane. When I have them on in a plane, I can’t even hear the plane engine, much less all the crying babies.

Now when I am hanging out at home and having conversations with the family while I’m playing, the Aftershokz bone conductors are my go to headphones. They’re not superior sound quality or anything but they’re cool in the fact that you don’t put them in your ear, they just rest on your temples. That way you can easily hear everything else going on around you. I have a few friends who have used them for gaming in a kind of social setting and know several who use them when they’re outside running and want to also have that alertness of their surroundings.

Both headphones I highly recommend depending on the reasons you need them for.

Anyway, let me know if you have any other tips for getting your bluetooth  headphones to work with the Nintendo Switch wirelessly in the comments, or let me know if this set up also worked for you. Have fun playing!


3 Comments

  • Reply MichiMangoLassi |

    Hello, this is a late comment but I needed to ask: have you ever had any issues with your headphones connecting to the Switch with the Trond Bluetooth Transmitter & Receiver? I have the same headphones as you and I love them, they are such a step up from my old headphones.

    My problem is this: I only have audio playing out of the left side of the headphones, not the right side. I honestly have no clue why it would do this and I don’t know where to even begin to troubleshoot this problem.

    Thank you.

    • Reply Eldorian |

      Late reply because I didn’t notice this earlier, but no – I have not had issues such as that. I would check the audio settings on the switch and see if there is something there you might need to change.

So, what do you think ?