Airpods Disconnecting

Lately I’ve been having a problem with my Airpods disconnecting from my iPhone. I’ll start playing music or a podcast and after a few seconds the music pauses. I look at my phone and the airpods are no longer connected. If I click on them in Bluetooth settings, they will play for a few more settings and then disconnect again. The only way to fix it, is to reboot my phone. Then the airpods connect as normal. But this has been happening pretty much every day now. I’ve had my airpods for over a year now and this started happening a few weeks ago. Has anyone else had these problems?

I’ve had the Airpods forget about the connection to my watch – not as much as in prior versions of Watch OS, but it does happen inexplicably.

Have you had similar problems with any other Bluetooth headphones or speakers?

How can I tell if my Apple Watch is hijacking the connection? I do have both connected, but I don’t expect the Apple Watch to play audio from my iPhone. Can it even do that?

It’s not about the watch playing audio from the phone, it’s about the watch taking over the connection to the AirPods to the AirPods are playing audio from the watch instead of the phone.

It’s been working all day so far, if this happens again tomorrow. I’ll try the troubleshooting steps above. Thanks everyone