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 detection of head nods and shakes, voice isolation, and a special dynamic tracking feature for gaming.

One change it didn’t announce, but which is available in the latest AirPods firmware beta, is the ability to tailor last year’s Adaptive Audio feature to your exact liking.

Customizable Adaptive Audio coming this fall

Alongside Apple’s other fall releases like iOS 18, AirPods are getting new firmware too. And for AirPods Pro 2 users, that firmware will support customizing Adaptive Audio in one of two ways.

In addition to the standard Adaptive Audio mix, you’ll be able to tweak it to allow either more or less noise to filter through. So if the default setting doesn’t quite block out enough noise for your liking, or if you think it cancels out too much noise, you can modify the feature.

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

The feature, which is currently exclusive to the second-generation AirPods Pro, is described by Apple in this way:

Adaptive Audio [is] a new listening mode that dynamically blends Transparency mode and Active Noise Cancellation together based on the conditions of a user’s environment to deliver the best experience in the moment. This new listening mode will seamlessly tailor the noise control experience while 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, such that I will toggle between Noise Cancellation and Adaptive Audio, whereas I used to bounce between Noise Cancellation and Transparency.

I plan to test both the ‘More Noise’ and ‘Less Noise’ settings to see if they’re a better fit for 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.