Connect Bluetooth Devices

Quick reference

• 00:04 Most of us these days have some kind of external device
• 00:07 that we'll need to connect to our PC and Windows 11.
• 00:11 That might be a printer, maybe a set of headphones, or
• 00:15 even something like an external hard drive to store our files.
• 00:19 Now a lot of the time we can physically connect these devices to our
• 00:24 PC using some kind of cable.
• 00:26 But if those devices are Bluetooth enabled, then we
• 00:29 can go completely wireless and connect them to Windows 11, using Bluetooth.
• 00:33 And that's what we're going to explore in this lesson I'm going to show you where
• 00:35 your Bluetooth settings live.
• 00:36 I'll show you how to turn on Bluetooth and we'll connect up a set of headphones.
• 00:43 Now we'll say the process for doing this does differ depending on the device.
• 00:47 And it really depends on the manufacturer of that device as well.
• 00:50 A lot of the time there are numerous different ways that you
• 00:53 might connect different devices to Bluetooth.
• 00:55 But in general, they all follow a similar process.
• 00:59 But I would always recommend if you do have a Bluetooth-enabled device.
• 01:03 That you check the manufacturer's instruction manual, so
• 01:07 that you know exactly what you have to press on that device.
• 01:10 In order to set up a Bluetooth connection with Windows 11.
• 01:14 So I'm going to show you what I do when I connect my Bluetooth headphones to
• 01:19 my system.
• 01:20 Now the process of connecting a Bluetooth device to Windows 11,
• 01:24 is called pairing, so you'll often hear that terminology.
• 01:28 And if you have a device that you're trying to connect,
• 01:31 a lot of the time there'll be some kind of pairing button on that device.
• 01:36 As I said this is the point when you're going to grab the instructions for
• 01:39 your device.
• 01:40 And have a look and see if you have a dedicated pairing button.
• 01:44 Or if you need to do something like hold down the power button for
• 01:48 seven seconds I know for some devices it's kind of that way.
• 01:51 So let's first jump into our Bluetooth settings and
• 01:54 make sure that we have Bluetooth turned on in Windows 11.
• 01:57 Now we're going to find this in settings, and
• 01:59 because we pinned it to the taskbar earlier.
• 02:01 We can simply click on the icon, to jump straight into our settings.
• 02:06 And this is fairly straightforward if we take a look at our left hand menu we have
• 02:10 an option for Bluetooth & Devices.
• 02:12 And the first thing you want to check in here, is that where it says Bluetooth,
• 02:17 we have this toggled On.
• 02:19 Now notice at the top, you can see all of the Bluetooth devices that are currently
• 02:24 paired with your system.
• 02:25 So you can see here I already have one device paired, and
• 02:29 I can't quite remember but I think this was an old set of headphones.
• 02:33 It was my previous set of headphones that I used to use with this system,
• 02:37 I haven't disconnected this so it is still paired.
• 02:39 If you do have old devices listed up here that you want to get rid of you can simply
• 02:44 click the three dots, and choose Remove device.
• 02:48 I could try and connect them, but because I don't actually physically have
• 02:51 those headphones anymore, it's not going to work.
• 02:53 So, I'm probably going to remove this device after this lesson, for
• 02:56 the time being I'm going to leave it right there.
• 02:59 Now I want to connect up my new Bluetooth headphones.
• 03:02 So I'm going to grab them, here they are just here, and
• 03:06 I'm going to click on Add device at the top.
• 03:09 So this is where we can choose the kind of device that we want to add.
• 03:13 Now before we go any further,
• 03:15 I'm going to make sure that I put my headphones into pairing mode.
• 03:19 Now for me with these headphones,
• 03:20 I have a little button just here it's actually just the power button.
• 03:24 If I press and hold this for a few seconds I get an audio prompt in my headphones,
• 03:29 which lets me know that these are now in pairing mode.
• 03:32 So you need to make sure you have your Bluetooth
• 03:35 device in pairing mode first before you go through this setup process.
• 03:40 So now I have these turned on, when I click on Bluetooth.
• 03:43 It's going to go away and it's going to search for
• 03:46 any Bluetooth devices that are discoverable.
• 03:49 And what we mean by discoverable is that they are in pairing mode.
• 03:53 So you can see there my device has just popped up so
• 03:56 let's click it, and it's as simple as that.
• 03:59 It connects really quickly, I can click on done, and
• 04:02 now you can see at the top here it says that my headphones are connected.
• 04:06 So I can now go away I can listen to music,
• 04:09 I can listen to YouTube videos through my headphones.
• 04:12 So a really simple and straightforward process for connecting Bluetooth devices.
• 04:17 The key factors here are make sure your device is Bluetooth enabled.
• 04:21 And also make sure you put it into pairing mode before going through the setup
• 04:24 process.
• 04:25 Now these other options that we have down here are really just ways to connect
• 04:29 different devices.
• 04:30 I always use this big Add device button at the top because it's practically
• 04:33 the same thing as using any of these.
• 04:35 For example, if I wanted to connect up a bluetooth mouse,
• 04:39 if I click on Add device, it basically just takes me to exactly the same window.
• 04:44 So in general I don't tend to use these I just click the Add device button
• 04:48 at the top.
• 04:48 And remember if we click the three dots we can choose to disconnect after we're
• 04:52 finished.
• 04:53 Or we can simply remove the device if we're no longer using it.

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