Among all the great announcements at WWDC 2021, AirPods were not overlooked. Apple announced several new features to help you better use AirPods. The iOS 15 update will help improve the earbud experience by making conversations more efficient and ensuring you don't lose your AirPods.
Let's take a look at the new features coming to AirPods with iOS 15.
1. Announce Notifications
This feature will allow Siri to read notifications you've received aloud (if you've chosen to let it do so). You can also enable location-based reminders to announce notifications or read lists when you arrive at a particular location. This is all in addition to Siri's existing feature of announcing calls with headphones on.
You can specify when you want to hear notifications announced and what notifications you don't want to hear. The Focus Feature will let you turn off or limit notifications when you are busy, asleep, driving, or doing any task where you prefer not to be disturbed unless it's urgent.
2. Conversation Boost
Contrary to what you might expect, the feature is not related to conversations you may have over the phone on your AirPods. This is instead a remarkable feature that aims to help people with mild hearing problems better converse in real life.
When you're wearing your AirPods and chatting with someone in front of you, the microphones on your AirPods will pick up their voice, isolate it, and amplify it—allowing you to hear them better.
While this is highly beneficial for people experiencing hearing difficulty, it can also help you hold a conversation in a busy or noisy environment. A slider will help you control how much background noise comes through your AirPods. You will also have a menu that helps you adjust left-right sound balance.
3. Spatial Audio
Don't want to make the trip to the movie theater? No problem.
Spatial Audio is designed to give you a cinema-like experience by simulating sound as if it's coming from the atmosphere around you, instead of your headphones.
This feature is coming to tvOS and macOS, so any video or audio played on these devices will use spatial audio with your AirPods. Spatial Audio has also come to FaceTime and will help you isolate a speaker's voice in a group call to enhance your FaceTime experience.
Speaking of this, iOS 15 is bringing several other major upgrades to Facetime.
4. Find My for AirPods
With this feature coming in iOS 15, it's going to be more difficult to misplace your AirPods.
In case you put your AirPods somewhere and leave the location, your iPhone will show you a push notification reminding you that you've left your AirPods behind. iOS 15 will also specify the location of your AirPods, so you can find out where they are whenever you want to.
The AirPods will emit a beep while you're using Find My on your Apple device, assisting you in locating them. You can set up a specific proximity range, after which your AirPods will sound an alarm when you move out of that set range. The proximity view will alert you as you get closer.
The feature works even if you lose just one of the buds, and not the whole set. Don't forget that Apple recently released AirTags, which help you find any item you've lost using Find My, in a similar manner.
Your AirPods Are More Advanced Than Ever
With these new features, the investment in a pair of AirPods is more worthwhile than ever. Apple has done well to make life easier for those with hearing impairment in Conversation Mode, and for people to enjoy media with Spatial Audio.
Any fear you might have of losing your AirPods is removed with the new Find My, and Announce Notifications will help you adapt better to a busy lifestyle. It's just one slice of the great features coming soon in iOS 15.
Image Credits: Apple