With Apple's WWDC 2025 devcon right around the corner, leaks suggest that the AirPods will receive a major feature upgrade. They will go beyond incremental upgrades to audio quality and could make your AirPods a smart device beyond audio.
According to 9to5Mac, five new AirPods features are on the horizon. They are sleep detection, camera controls, new head gestures, enhanced microphone capabilities, and improved device pairing.
Sleep detection is the most interesting of the lot and something we all might use once it rolls out. Often, we find ourselves dozing off to sleep while listening to podcasts or playlists. The report rightfully notes that people use sleep timers to get past this, but a lot of apps don't support it. For example, while Spotify and YouTube Music do support sleep timers, Amazon Music doesn't.
If implemented, the sleep detection feature would allow AirPods to intelligently recognise when a user falls asleep and automatically pause audio playback, eliminating the need for manual sleep timers. This capability is currently available on the Apple Watch. So, it would be interesting to see how well the sleep detection feature works on the AirPods.
The next major addition would be camera control. As the name suggests, this feature would let users remotely control their iPhone's camera shutter directly from their AirPods. By pinching the AirPod stem, users would be able to capture photos or initiate/pause video recordings. This functionality aligns with Apple's ongoing efforts to create a seamless, hands-free experience across its devices.
Now, although camera control will utilise the AirPod's stem, new head gestures will streamline further interaction with the earbuds. Last year, Apple introduced the vertical and horizontal nod gesture with the AirPods 4 and AirPods Pro 2 to decline or accept calls.
Now, as per the report, Apple plans to introduce a "Conversation Awareness" volume gesture. Right now, you can use this feature by pressing and holding or swiping up on the AirPods stem.
On the audio front, microphone capabilities are poised to get an upgrade. The AirPods are rumoured to introduce "studio quality" mic mode. Building on last year's Audio Mix feature on the iPhone 16 lineup, this also promises intelligent background noise separation using machine learning. This upgrade could make the AirPods a viable tool for high-fidelity audio capture in various environments, especially in the content creator economy.
Finally, Apple is said to be working on an enhanced pairing experience. The company will address the common friction point of pairing-related issues in certain scenarios, such as classrooms where multiple students use the same device.
Now, it remains unclear whether the new features will reach all AirPods models or only the latest ones. That said, Apple has yet to announce the above-mentioned features, so take this report with a pinch of salt. We will get official information soon as the WWDC 2025 keynote kicks off on June 09, 2025.
