Apple Is About to Upgrade Your Current AirPods with Some Neat New Abilities

Apple isn’t expected to announce new AirPods — or really any new hardware — at WWDC next week.

However, if recent reports are accurate, it could be set to reveal some pretty neat new features coming to the AirPods that you already have.

AirPods are getting better

Photo by Tucker Bowe for Gear Patrol

At WWDC, Apple is going to give us a first look at the next-generation operating systems coming to all its various devices. When it rolls out iOS 19 — which may actually be called iOS 26 (reportedly, Apple is going to make the change to align it with the year 2026) — it’s going to bring some updates that’ll impact your current AirPods.

As first revealed by 9to5Mac, the software update will give your AirPods several new abilities … but there are two standouts.

First, a “Camera Control” feature that will let you remotely take photos on your iPhone (or iPad) by clicking the AirPods stem.

This will be similar to the remote camera control feature on your Apple Watch, but it’ll be a little trickier using your AirPods as you obviously won’t have a viewfinder to see what’s in frame. (If you have EarPods, Apple’s wired earbuds, you’ve been able to do this with the volume buttons.)

Photo by Tucker Bowe for Gear Patrol

Second, a new “Sleep Auto-Pause” feature will be introduced. That’s right, when you fall asleep while listening to music, your AirPods will have the ability to pause your music (or podcast) automatically.

The caveat with this feature is that it’s unclear if you’ll need an Apple Watch for this to work. No current AirPods have a built-in heart rate monitor (although the newest Beats Powerbeats Pro 2 do), which is one of the main sensors the Apple Watch uses to detect sleep.

Additionally, 9to5Mac‘s report also notes a few other new abilities that could come to AirPods, including new head gestures for quickly adjusting volume and/or swapping between ANC and transparency modes (if your AirPods support it).

Photo by Tucker Bowe for Gear Patrol

Which AirPods will support them?

If you have older AirPods — specifically, the models that Apple no longer sells — it’s likely they won’t support these new features. It’s suspected that you’ll need AirPods that have Apple’s latest H2 chip, which is only integrated in the AirPods Pro (2nd generation) and the AirPods 4 (both models).

The AirPods Max — including the new second-generation models that were released this past fall — only have Apple’s older H1 chip, so it’s likely that these upcoming features won’t roll out to them.

As is tradition, Apple is expected to announce these next-gen operating systems at WWDC — which will take place on Monday, June 9 — but they won’t officially roll out to the public until September.

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