Congratulations! You are the proud owner of a pair of AirPods Pro. You’ve likely already experienced the magic of popping them in your ears and hearing the world fade away with Active Noise Cancellation. It’s the feature that sells the device, and for good reason—it turns a chaotic subway ride into a zen garden.
However, if you are only using your AirPods Pro for noise cancellation and listening to music, you are driving a Ferrari in first gear. Apple has packed these tiny white earbuds with an incredible amount of technology that often goes unnoticed because it’s tucked away deep in the Settings menu or the Control Center.
Whether you want to boost your productivity, hear conversations better in crowded rooms, or simply customize your listening experience, there is a hidden feature waiting for you. Let’s dive into the settings you didn't know you needed to unlock the full potential of your audio experience.
1. The "Polite" Mode: Conversation Awareness
We have all been there: You are grooving to your favorite playlist or deeply engrossed in a podcast when someone walks up to ask you a quick question. Usually, this involves a frantic fumble to pause your audio or physically remove an earbud. With the latest updates to AirPods Pro (2nd Generation), Apple introduced a feature that feels genuinely futuristic: Conversation Awareness.
When this feature is enabled, your AirPods utilize artificial intelligence to detect when you start speaking. As soon as you say "Hello" or "One coffee, please," the earbuds automatically lower the volume of your media and enhance the voices in front of you, while reducing background noise. Once you stop talking, your music gently fades back up to its original volume.
Pro Tip: If you love singing along to your music while working, you might want to toggle this off temporarily! The AirPods are sensitive enough that your karaoke session might trigger the volume drop, thinking you are trying to talk to someone.
How to enable Conversation Awareness:
- Put your AirPods Pro in your ears and open Settings on your iPhone.
- Tap on your AirPods Pro (it should appear right near the top).
- Scroll down to the Audio section.
- Toggle the switch for Conversation Awareness to On.
2. Turn Your iPhone into a Super-Mic with Live Listen
While this feature was originally designed as an accessibility tool to help those with hearing challenges, "Live Listen" has become a secret weapon for everyday scenarios. Essentially, this feature turns your iPhone’s microphone into a remote transmitter that beams audio directly to your AirPods.
Why would you use this? Imagine you are at a noisy restaurant with a large group of friends. The person at the other end of the table is telling a story, but the clatter of silverware and background chatter makes it impossible to hear. With Live Listen, you can slide your iPhone down the table closer to them. Your phone picks up their voice and plays it crystal clear in your ears, cutting through the ambient noise.
It is also fantastic for lectures or conferences where you are stuck in the back row. By placing your phone closer to the speaker (with permission, of course), you get front-row audio from the back of the room.
How to set up Live Listen:
- First, you need to add the Hearing control to your Control Center. Go to Settings > Control Center.
- Scroll down and tap the green + button next to Hearing (look for the ear icon).
- With your AirPods connected, swipe down from the top-right corner of your screen to open Control Center.
- Tap the Ear icon.
- Tap Live Listen to turn it on.
3. Instant Focus with Built-in Background Sounds
In the age of open-plan offices and remote work, maintaining focus is a constant battle. Many of us pay for subscriptions to apps like Calm or Headspace just to get access to white noise or nature sounds. But did you know your iPhone and AirPods Pro have a high-quality white noise machine built right into the operating system?
Apple’s "Background Sounds" feature allows you to play calming audio—like ocean waves, rain, a flowing stream, or various frequencies of white noise—underneath your other media or on its own. It is surprisingly effective at masking distracting irregularities in your environment, like a barking dog or a humming refrigerator.
The beauty of this feature is that it mixes with your system audio. You can listen to a podcast while having the sound of rain gently falling in the background, creating a cozy atmosphere anywhere you go.
Battery Note: While this feature is incredibly useful for focus, continuous audio streaming does consume battery. Luckily, the AirPods Pro charging case holds multiple charges, so just pop them back in for 15 minutes if you run low during a marathon work session.
How to activate Background Sounds:
- Open your Control Center (swipe down from the top right).
- Tap the Hearing icon (the ear).
- Tap Background Sounds to turn it on.
- Tap Background Sounds again to choose your sound (Rain, Ocean, Stream, Balanced Noise, Bright Noise, or Dark Noise).
- Use the slider to adjust the volume of the background sound independently of your main volume.
4. Personalized Spatial Audio: A Private Concert
You have likely seen the term "Spatial Audio" thrown around in Apple Music or Netflix, but if you haven't taken the time to set up Personalized Spatial Audio, you are missing out on the full immersion. Standard stereo sound plays audio into your left and right ears. Spatial Audio, however, places sound around you, simulating a surround sound system.
When you add "Head Tracking" to the mix, it gets even wilder. If you are watching a movie on your iPad and you turn your head to the left, the sound of the dialogue will shift to your right ear, anchoring the sound to the screen just like in a real theater.
The "Personalized" setup takes this a step further by using the TrueDepth camera on your iPhone (the one used for FaceID) to scan the geometry of your ears and head. It creates a custom sound profile tailored specifically to how you hear. The result is a richer, more accurate soundstage that makes instruments feel like they are occupying physical space in the room with you.
How to calibrate Personalized Spatial Audio:
- Go to Settings and tap on your AirPods Pro.
- Scroll down to Personalized Spatial Audio.
- Tap Personalize Spatial Audio… and follow the on-screen prompts.
- You will need to move your head in a circle while holding the phone, similar to setting up FaceID.
5. Siri Can Be Your Personal Secretary
For a long time, voice assistants felt clunky. You had to wait for the beep, hope it understood you, and often just gave up. However, with the H2 chip in the newer AirPods Pro, Siri has become incredibly responsive and helpful, specifically regarding notifications.
The "Announce Notifications" feature allows Siri to read incoming messages to you efficiently. It’s smart enough to know not to interrupt you if you are in the middle of a phone call, but if you are listening to music, it will lower the volume, tell you who the message is from, and read the content.
The real power move here is the ability to reply instantly without saying "Hey Siri." After Siri reads a text, the microphone stays open for a few seconds. You can simply say, "Tell him I’ll be there in five minutes," and off it goes. This is completely hands-free and perfect for when you are washing dishes, carrying groceries, or working out.
How to configure Announce Notifications:
- Go to Settings > Notifications.
- Tap on Announce Notifications.
- Toggle the switch to On.
- Ensure Headphones is toggled on.
- You can also customize exactly which apps are allowed to interrupt you. We recommend keeping this limited to Messages, Calendar, and perhaps your delivery apps like Uber Eats, so you aren't bombarded by Instagram likes.
Your AirPods Pro are capable of so much more than just silence. By taking five minutes to tweak these settings, you transform them from simple headphones into a smart wearable device that adapts to your environment, protects your focus, and keeps you connected without you ever needing to look at a screen. Try one of these features today—you might wonder how you ever lived without it.