Actually Windows has one of the easiest ways to switch between Audio outputs, right from the taskbar. I have no idea what you are talking about.

I don't think you have used a Mac recently then. When you plug headphones in, the sound outputs through the headphones. And it works if the computer was off when you plugged them in. Or asleep. Or closed. I probably care way to much about this.

> When you plug headphones in, the sound outputs through the headphones.

That's how Windows 10 behaves for me. I already knew it, but just tried again for you playing a movie using VLC and plugging in my headphones. Works like a charm.

Windows frequently gets confused by my USB DAC and tries to send sound to my HDMI connected monitor.

I have the same experience - on-board sound, usb dac (primary) and hdmi audio interface on an nvidia card.

Every so often it will "forget" that it should be using the usb dac and revert to the hdmi audio output.

No pop-up menus?

No nothing. Also, forgot to mention another test, went to hibernate while the sound playing through laptop's speakers, plugged in headphones while the machine is off, started the machine. Sound was coming through the headphones after the boot. I'm on a t450s.

I think that's a vendor implementation. I used a Lenovo for a long time, worked perfectly without a pop-up. Just got a Dell XPS 15, it pops up a prompt when I plug stuff in (but it also allows me to set a default behavior, so.... ‍️

No, never experienced them on my machine while switching between headphones and external speakers. Maybe you have some misconfigured driver?

I'm consistently baffled by MS. It employs some incredibly smart people, but reliably generates consumer products that are bywords for uninspired user hostility.

This is exactly how my Windows laptop behaves as well. I never care about it, and when I want to override it, I just do it in three clicks.

I use Windows and that's how it worked since I can remember. There must be some issue with your OS installation, driver or laptop.

I believe that's how it work on Linux too!

Same thing happens on Windows.

Usually, it's up to the audio chipset driver manufacturers to provide the headphone switching logic. Windows itself has a more passive view of sound devices. You can change the active device from the context menu of the speaker icon in the system tray, and some chipsets (e.g., Realtek) tend to do the headphone switching for you.

> When plugging headphones stops being a complicated and finicky process

Apple solved that problem by not even letting you plug in headphones!

My notebook had some issues re plugging in headphones and Bluetooth because of some bad Realtek drivers. Uninstalling that and using Microsoft's own drivers solved the problem.

3rd party software on Windows machines is an ongoing problem.