How to fix Live listening “Unavailable for current route” on iPhone Xs/7/iOS 12/iOS 14

Many iPhone 7/6s users are getting “Unavailable for current route” message while using live listen with Airpods. The issue comes up while setting up live listening. Even on iPhone 8 with iOS 12 When iPhone users adds Live Listen to Control Centre and try to add or turn on live listen, get this message: “Unavailable for Current Route”? The message shown is confusing and difficult to guess what went wrong. 

AirPods live listen- Unavailable for current route


This message in not occurring on all the iPhone model and users having multiple iPhones are facing this issue on one set while not on the other iPhone. Connecting Bluetooth headphones simply never works. Every time the iPhone users would get an error saying that Live Listen was: "Unavailable for current route".



From the error message "Unavailable for current route" the route mentioned here is the one the audio takes from iOS/iPhone microphone to AirPods but this isn't the clearest kind of message to give a normal iPhone users. Apple should make such error more understandable to a common users.

How to fix Live listening issue : "Unavailable for current route” on iPhone XS Max/ XR and iPhone 8/7 on iOS 12:


Fix 1: Restart the iPhone


For some users a simple restart has helped them to fix the issue. After the restart when they tried to use AirPods with live listening the error message Unavailable for current route did not occur again. But for most of the users the restart did not help in which case please read following fixes. 

Fix 2 : Reconnect the AirPods




One other working fix for the issue is to use re register AirPods again to iPhone. To do that

1.     Go to Bluetooth / AirPods / Forget This Device.
2.     Restart the iPhone.
3.     Go to Bluetooth / Other Devices / AirPods / Connect.

Fix 3: Toggle Hearing Aid


Try toggling hearing aid compatibility and test again. This may help to fix the issue. Go to Settings > General > Accessibility-> Hearing Aid. 

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