You are on a call and suddenly the audio cuts to robotic static. Your wireless earbuds drop out halfway through a song. Your Bluetooth speaker skips every time you walk past the microwave. Bluetooth is wonderful when it works and maddening when it does not — which is more often than it should be.

Most Bluetooth problems have the same three causes. Here they are, in order of likelihood, with the fix for each.

Cause 1: too many saved connections

Your phone remembers every Bluetooth device it has ever paired with. Over time, this list gets long. Your phone is constantly scanning for these devices in the background, and that scanning interferes with the one active connection you actually want. Go into your Bluetooth settings, find “Previously connected devices” or “Saved devices,” and delete everything you do not use regularly. That old rental car, the speaker at your friend’s house, the earbuds you lost two years ago — remove them all.

I did this and my Bluetooth connection stability improved noticeably in a single day.

Cause 2: interference from USB 3.0 and WiFi

Bluetooth operates on the 2.4 GHz frequency band — the same band as WiFi, microwave ovens, and USB 3.0 ports. If your Bluetooth dongle or your phone is near a USB 3.0 hub or an external hard drive, the electrical noise from that port can drown out the Bluetooth signal. Move your Bluetooth device away from USB hubs and see if the problem goes away.

Similarly, if your WiFi router is blasting 2.4 GHz right next to your Bluetooth speaker, switch your phone to 5 GHz WiFi (if your router supports it) or move the speaker away from the router.

Cause 3: codec mismatch

Some Bluetooth devices default to a low-quality codec (SBC) that is prone to dropping when the connection gets congested. On Android, you can enable Developer Options (Settings → About Phone → tap “Build Number” seven times) and then go to Developer Options → Bluetooth Audio Codec. Try switching to AAC or aptX if your headphones support it. On iPhone, this is handled automatically and you cannot change it manually.

The nuclear option

If nothing else works: forget the device entirely from your Bluetooth settings, restart your phone, and re-pair it from scratch. This clears any corrupted connection profiles. It is the “turn it off and on again” of the Bluetooth world, and it fixes more problems than it should.