- AirPods Pro 2 will occasionally ring when in their case
- It is not a bug or a mistake; it is a function
- Other case sounds can be turned off in Settings
It turns out that people on social media were right: Apple really upped the ante with its AirPods Pro 2. If you’ve noticed that your AirPods case has been chiming when it didn’t before, or chiming in new ways, it’s not a mistake and it’s not a mistake. It is a function.
The discussion about the new bell started on the ATP podcast and on Mastodon, where Ian Williamson asked if anyone else got an extra bell a while after putting their AirPods Pro 2 back in their case. Yes, came the reply; We have also wondered about that. And because this is the internet, it didn’t take long for them to find an explanation.
It is because of the wake. Not really. It’s a new feature that’s part of Apple’s rollout of hearing health in its flagship best-in-class noise-canceling earbuds.
Why are AirPods Pro 2 ringing when they didn’t ring before?
The answer is on Apple’s support page, which reads: “To ensure that your AirPods microphones and speakers are working at their best (for example, to help provide high-quality hearing test results), your AirPods may periodically play a quiet bell when they are in their charging case.”
The reason AirPods Pro 2 self-check is because Apple’s hearing health technology is designed to adapt the sound you hear based on a hearing profile. In order to maintain this personalization, it appears that your AirPods will need to monitor themselves by performing their own sound check from time to time to ensure that everything is still calibrated correctly.
The new bell sound is not the only sound that your AirPods Pro 2 can make: they also ring when you are about to run out of battery or when you connect the charger to the mains or place it on a charging pad. But you can turn off the sounds in question in Settings if they annoy you.
