Soon you’ll be able to tailor AirPods Pro’s adaptive audio to your liking

Apple announced several new features coming to AirPods later this year, like nod and shake detection, voice isolation, and a special dynamic tracking feature for gaming.

One change it hasn’t announced, but is available in the latest AirPods firmware beta, is the ability to tailor last year’s Adaptive Audio feature to your exact tastes.

Customizable adaptive audio coming this fall

Along with other fall releases from Apple like iOS 18, AirPods are also getting new firmware. And for AirPods Pro 2 users, this firmware will support customizing adaptive audio in two ways.

In addition to the standard adaptive audio mixing, you will be able to modify it to allow either more or less noise to filter. So if the default setting doesn’t block enough noise for your liking, or you think it cancels out too much noise, you can change the feature.

Adaptive Audio was first introduced last year as a sort of balance between two existing AirPods Pro features: noise cancellation and transparency. As the name suggests, Adaptive Audio will take into account your environment and dynamically adapt to cancel out certain noises while letting in others.

The feature, currently exclusive to second-generation AirPods Pro, is described by Apple as follows:

Adaptive Audio (is) a new listening mode that dynamically combines Transparency mode and active noise cancellation based on the conditions of the user’s environment to deliver the best experience of the moment. This new listening mode will seamlessly adapt the noise control experience as users move between environments and interactions that are constantly changing throughout the day.

For me, Adaptive Audio has replaced Transparency mode in my daily use, so I will switch between noise cancellation and adaptive audio, whereas I used to switch between noise cancellation and transparency .

I plan to test the “More Noise” and “Less Noise” settings to see if they better suit my needs.

Do you use adaptive audio? Will you adjust it to allow more or less noise after the update? Let us know in the comments.