- AirPods Pro 2 will occasionally chime when they’re in their case
- It’s not a bug or a fault; it’s a feature
- Other case sounds can be turned off in Settings
It turns out that people on social media were right: Apple really has increased the chime rate with its AirPods Pro 2. If you’ve noticed that your AirPods case has been chiming when it didn’t chime before, or chiming in new ways, it’s not a bug and it’s not a fault. It’s a feature.
Discussion of the new chime began on the ATP podcast and on Mastodon, where Ian Williamson asked if anyone else was getting an extra chime some time after putting their AirPods Pro 2 back in their case. Yes, came the answer; we’ve been wondering about that too. And because this is the internet, it wasn’t long before they found an explanation.
It’s because of woke. Not really. It’s a new feature that’s part of Apple’s hearing health roll-out in its flagship best noise cancelling earbuds.
Why are AirPods Pro 2 chiming when they didn’t chime before?
The answer is on Apple’s support page, which reads: “To help ensure that your AirPods microphones and speakers are operating at their best (for example, to help provide high-quality hearing test results), your AirPods may periodically play a quiet chime when they’re in their charging case.”
The reason the AirPods Pro 2 are checking themselves is because Apple’s hearing health tech is designed to personalize the audio you hear based on a hearing profile. In order to maintain that personalization, it seems that your AirPods need to self monitor by performing their own sound-check from time to time, to ensure that everything’s still calibrated correctly.
The new chime isn’t the only sound your AirPods Pro 2 might make: they also chime when you’re running low on battery or when you connect the charger to the mains or stick it on a charging pad. But you can turn those particular sounds off in Settings if they annoy you.