How to Turn On or Off Switch to Headset Audio when Mixed Reality Portal Running in Windows 10


Mixed Reality Portal is the desktop app that takes you through Windows Mixed Reality setup. It also serves as the command center on your PC for your mixed reality experience.

Windows Mixed Reality is designed to play sound through your immersive headset when you’re wearing it and have headphones connected to it. When you take the headset off or flip the visor up, audio will switch to your default Windows playback device (ex: desktop speaker).

Windows Mixed Reality spatial audio works best with headphones built into or connected directly to your immersive headset. PC speakers or headphones connected to the PC might not work well for spatial audio.

Windows Mixed Reality doesn’t support Bluetooth audio headsets.

See also: Using Windows Mixed Reality FAQ | Windows Support

This tutorial will show you how to turn on or off to automatically switch to headset audio with Mixed Reality Portal is running for your account in Windows 10.

Windows Mixed Reality is deprecated and will be removed in a future release of Windows. This deprecation includes the Mixed Reality Portal app, and Windows Mixed Reality for SteamVR and Steam VR Beta.



Contents

  • Option One: Turn On or Off Switch to Headset Audio when Mixed Reality Portal is Running in Settings
  • Option Two: Turn On or Off Switch to Headset Audio when Mixed Reality Portal is Running using a REG file






OPTION ONE

Turn On or Off Switch to Headset Audio when Mixed Reality Portal is Running in Settings


1 Open Settings, and click/tap on the Mixed reality icon.

2 Click/tap on Audio and speech on the left side, and turn on (default) or off When Mixed Reality Portal is running, switch to headset audio on the right side for what you want. (see screenshot below)

3 You can now close Settings if you like.

Turn On or Off Switch to Headset Audio if Mixed Reality Portal Running-mixed_reality_headset_audio.jpg






OPTION TWO

Turn On or Off Switch to Headset Audio when Mixed Reality Portal is Running using a REG file


The downloadable .reg files below will modify the DWORD value in the registry key below.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Holographic\SpeechAndAudio

PreferDesktopSpeaker DWORD

0 = On
1 = Off


1 Do step 2 (on) or step 3 (off) below for what you would like to do.


2 To Turn On Switch to Headset Audio when Mixed Reality Portal is Running

This is the default setting.

A) Click/tap on the Download button below to download the file below, and go to step 4 below.

Turn_ON_switch_to_headset_audio_when_Mixed_Reality_Portal_running.reg

Download


3 To Turn Off Switch to Headset Audio when Mixed Reality Portal is Running

A) Click/tap on the Download button below to download the file below, and go to step 4 below.

Turn_OFF_switch_to_headset_audio_when_Mixed_Reality_Portal_running.reg

Download


4 Save the .reg file to your desktop.

5 Double click/tap on the downloaded .reg file to merge it.

6 When prompted, click/tap on Run, Yes (UAC), Yes, and OK to approve the merge.

7 You can now delete the downloaded .reg file if you like.


That's it,
Shawn Brink