AirPods & AirPods Pro Hidden Features! 10 Apple Secrets

This video is brought to you by NordVPN. Yo, what's up guys? Sam here. I've got AirPods 2 and AirPods Pro in hand. I've been messing around with them and instead of showing you guys the obvious features like noise cancellation or, you know, hands-free Siri functionality that you already know about, I wanted to dive a bit deeper and show you some more hidden features and other things that Apple changed in AirPods 2 and AirPods Pro that you might not know about already. If you're excited for this video, drop a like down below. It does seriously help me out. One of the coolest iOS 13 features added this year was the ability to share audio between multiple sets of headphones. Now, they do have to be Apple branded, so some Beats and all AirPods, but it works like this. Your friend could have a pair and you could have a pair of AirPods and they bring theirs close to your phone. You should see a magical pop-up like this. If not, just Bluetooth connect their headphones to your device and now by tapping on both pairs of AirPods right here, you can share audio in sync between you and your friend. So, no more sharing earbuds, no more being like, oh, I got the right this time, you get the left earbud. You guys can get full stereo audio at the same time and it works really well. When you have AirPods connected to your iPhone or your iPad, there's actually a wealth of settings that you can find inside of the Bluetooth menu. So, here you can actually rename your AirPods to whatever you want. It doesn't have to just be like your name, so Sam's AirPods, it could be anything which is really cool. So, just like you can name your iPhone or your iPad, you can also rename your AirPods, but you can also, this is something you can't really do on many headphones, use AirPods as modified hearing aids of source. Okay, this one's pretty wild. It's called Live Listen and while AirPods Pro sort of have it built in through transparency mode where it amplifies the sounds around you, you can sort of get that feature on normal AirPods 1 and 2 as well. So, head over to settings, control center, and then enable the hearing toggle and then go to control center, press and hold on it and tap to enable Live Listen and you'll notice immediately everything in your environment around you gets amped up a bit, which could allow you to hear things that you may not have been able to hear before. So, pretty interesting, right? So, AirPods Pro comes standard with a wireless charging case and while this is an option for AirPods 2, there is some added functionality on the Pro version of the wireless charging case. It's not much, but while you're actually wireless charging your AirPods Pro, you can tap on the case to see the charging status. Obviously, orange means there is still a bit left to charge, green means it is fully charged and ready to go, but if I do the same thing on AirPods 2, well, nothing happens at all. So, if you have that Pro model, you don't have to open up your AirPods to actually see how much they're charged. Now, when you're not charging your AirPods, there are a couple of different ways to check the battery levels. So, there is the widget on the home screen, but that one's pretty obvious. You can also, though, ask Siri about battery life. Just say, hey, and then, you know, Siri, I don't want to trigger all of your devices. What's the battery on my AirPods? And Siri will say left and right different values for your AirPods if they are draining at a different rate, which is pretty handy. On top of giving you that battery information, Siri can also help you find your AirPods if you lose them. Now, there are so many terms and conditions, asterisks, red flags with this. I have not had good luck with this feature at all, but the way it's supposed to work is that you ask Siri to play a sound, you confirm it, and then you'll be able to find your AirPods because you'll hear the sound. The problem is AirPods can only get so loud because they're meant to play music and sounds in your ear, not out loud and act as a speaker. So, even when it does connect, it's incredibly hard to hear. And one of my good friends lost their AirPods and this feature didn't actually help them at all. So, take this with what you will. It might help you, it might not, but overall, it's pretty much a mixed bag. And now more than ever, so is browsing online without using a VPN. Using NordVPN allows you to stay safer while browsing online, especially when you're in a place that's not your personal home private network. It's called a VPN, a virtual private network, because it allows you to create your own mini safe spot no matter where you are. 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Now, Apple's talked about the ear tip fit test for AirPods Pro publicly, but it's still something that I think a lot of people may overlook. Because AirPods Pro are actually in ear, Apple provides a really cool test to make sure that you have the perfect fit using either the small, medium, or large silicone cup. So, when you run this test, you hit continue, you play the song, and it essentially plays this track, which I think is worth a listen just for the comedic aspect of it. It sounds like there is no thought at all put into what track Apple played here, but it turns out this is actually making sure that there is a proper suction or barrier between your inner ear and the outside world. And it'll tell you whether or not you've got the right silicone tips in to make sure that noise canceling and sound quality is at its peak performance. For AirPods 1 and 2 owners, you have the ability to customize what double tap actions happen. So, if you didn't know already, your AirPods actually have double tap functionality where you can either play or pause by double tapping on your left or right AirPod, or go to the next track, or to the previous track, or even activate Siri. You can access this in the AirPod settings again inside of Bluetooth and set up different actions for both your left and right pods. So, for me, it made sense to do like previous track was to double tap my left pod, and then next track would be to double track my right pod. But playing pause could also be really handy so that you wouldn't have to take out your AirPod to stop your music. And for AirPods Pro owners, it's a lot simpler. You actually have play and pause just by tapping on this portion of the short stem. And then you have a ton of other actions like double tap, triple tap to skip that song and go back to the previous one. AirPods can also read you your text messages and have you reply hands-free. So, to do this and turn it on, head over to the settings app, then Siri and search. And you'll see right in the middle of your screen, it says announce messages. When you turn this on, you have to have second generation AirPods or newer, or some Beats headphones again like PowerBeats Pro. And when that is enabled, Siri will actually read you all of your text messages from either all your contacts, your favorites, your recents, pretty much whoever you select. And if you turn this setting on down here below, reply without confirmation, Siri will send back whatever they think you said directly to the person. So, that can be a little bit risky, but if you're confident and you just want that seamless integration, you can go for that option. But now you don't even have to pull out your phone or your watch just to keep talking to someone. This also works for phone calls as well, although obviously you can't automatically reply. Just head over to the settings app again, phone, and then announce calls. And this can work with all headphones actually, not just AirPods or some Beats headphones. Closing out this list, you can actually change which of your AirPods is the default microphone pickup. Now, by default, it is set to automatic, which I actually prefer. But if you listen to one of your AirPods by itself, either left or right frequently, you may want to select this as the default microphone. Or if you wear a hat a lot and it's like covering your left ear, but not covering your right ear, maybe set it to your right AirPods so that all the audio can be picked up properly and clearly, and Apple doesn't have to sort of figure it out in the backend, like which one is more clear. So, those are my favorite hidden features, the lesser known features that I think you guys would enjoy. If you did like this video, if you learned something new, drop a like down below. That does seriously help me out. And of course, hit subscribe so you stay up to date with more Apple news. That's all I've got for you guys today. Thanks again, and I'll catch all of you in my next video.