Home / Tech / Apple

Apple’s AirPods Pro Will Soon Be Way Better for Work Calls

Apple’s potentially making it easier than ever to play hooky from the office or, at a minimum, be more respectful of your colleague’s hearing.

Translucent view of a single Apple AirPod Pro showing the inner components of the wireless earbudApple

By Ben Bowers

Published

·

Updated

By now, most of us have suffered through phone calls where at least one person is wearing a pair of AirPods in a noisy environment.

While apologizing for the background noise is usually fine for personal conversations, work calls can be different.

Few people like emphasizing they’re on the move or multi-tasking during business calls, especially if colleagues on the other line are dutifully sitting at work.

voice isolation
Voice Isolation currently exists as a setting in iOS, iPadOS and MacOS that users can turn on from their devices. To learn how to do this, read our guide.
Tucker Bowe

And while vigilantly tapping the mute and unmute toggle when you aren’t speaking can help, it can’t totally prevent unwanted background noise from leaking in. It’s also a pain to keep track of while multi-tasking, hence colleagues’ routine “you’re on mute” reminders.

Today, Apple announced a new feature coming to the AirPods Pro that addresses this issue head-on. So-called Voice Isolation, a useful but strangely hidden feature of iOS, iPadOS, and MacOS, is now coming to AirPods Pro.

It uses the AirPods Pro second generation’s H2 chip and machine learning to remove “significant” background noise from call audio, letting others on the line hear your voice more clearly and without distraction.

When iOS 18 rolls out, Voice Isolation will be enabled by default for anybody with an iPhone 15 and AirPods Pro 2. If you have an older iPhone, you’ll be prompted to enable Voice Isolation during the iOS 18 walkthrough.

four generations of airpods sitting on a table
Not sure if you have the 2nd generation of the AirPods Pro? There are several ways to check your AirPods model number. Thankfully Apple has its own guide to help.
Tucker Bowe

Unfortunately, the feature won’t come to Apple’s premium AirPods Max headphones or any of its more affordable wireless earbuds; it’s dependent on the H2 chip that’s only in Apple’s second-generation AirPods Pro.

In addition to Voice Isolation, Apple also showcased a new ability to interact with Siri while wearing AirPods Pro without using your voice. Specifically, users can nod yes or no in response to questions from the virtual assistant. The use case here, as Apple showcased in its WWDC presentation, is to avoid awkward moments where speaking out loud to yourself might seem silly – say, for example, in a crowded elevator when Siri asks if you want to accept an incoming phone call. 

Apple says the new features will be available “this fall.” A firmware update for the AirPods Pro 2 is expected to roll out around the same time as iOS 18.

LEARN MORE

Read More


,