Do Airpods Make a Sound When Low Battery? (Answered!)
AirPods are impressive gadgets: They’re coveted, top-of-the-line earbuds created with the music lover in mind. They boast exceptional sound quality along with undeniable style—and, as it turns out, they also come with a pretty hefty price tag. Hence, they’re a considerable investment for listeners who want to purchase them.
Then, it makes sense that those who own AirPods want to get as much battery life out of them as possible. The earbuds are promoted as having 6 hours of battery life with one charge and up to 30 hours with the case, which sounds great—until they run out of battery and you can’t hear any sound at all!
It would be nice to avoid this dilemma and get a heads up so you can safely charge your AirPods before you miss a beat. So, let’s see whether AirPods provide any low battery warning.
Do AirPods Make a Sound When the Battery Is Low?
As it turns out, AirPods do make a sound when the battery is low. Your AirPods will warn you by playing a tone in one or both of your AirPods when the battery is low. This alert occurs at 10 percent and then right before the AirPods turn off. It isn’t much warning, and it would be easy to miss the warning tone the first time, leaving you a little disappointed when you eventually lose connection as the battery dies.
To prevent being blindsided by this, you can also periodically check the notification screen of your iPhone or iPad. The AirPods are much more “assertive” in letting you know about your dwindling charge this way: You’ll get notifications when you have 20, 10, and 5 percent of battery life remaining.
How Can I Make My AirPods Battery Life Last Longer?
AirPods let you interact with Siri, listen to your favorite songs or podcasts, or chat with friends, family, and colleagues on the phone hands-free. These are all wonderful features, and such conveniences will make your battery life drain faster.
But the good news is that there are ways to make your AirPods battery life last longer.
With 3rd generation models, you can charge them for just 5 minutes in their case and get around 1 hour of listening time and approximately 1 hour of talk time. They take about an hour to charge fully.
You can also take advantage of the “optimized charging” feature. This cool new update lets your devices learn your daily routine. When you charge your AirPods, they’ll charge up to 80 percent until just before you use them.
You can also use the following tips to improve your AirPods’ Battery Life:
- Store them in their case. The case itself can supply battery life to your AirPods—it charges them, after all. So if you keep them in the case when you’re not using them, then they’ll be ready for you when you need them.
- Keep your AirPods in a safe area. A safe space is where the earbuds won’t be vulnerable to bumps, which could damage the device. You could also accidentally flip open the case, which starts using the Bluetooth battery. You should also keep your earbuds safe from extreme temperatures because either extreme heat or cold can damage the batteries.
- Try turning off extraneous features. If your AirPods seem to be dying too quickly, then you may need to try disabling some features that are known to be battery hogs. These include Automatic Ear Detection and noise cancellation.
- Automatic Ear Detection switches the audio to the AirPods if you put them in your ears. Doing this requires the Bluetooth to search and connect, which takes up battery power.
- Noise cancellation requires the AirPods to utilize their outward-facing microphones to detect external sounds and then cancel those sounds with anti-noise. That also drains a lot of battery life.
Can I Change My AirPods Low Battery Sound?
Even if you’re as diligent as possible about charging your AirPods, you still might want to adjust your low battery sound.
The bad news is that you can’t adjust the sound, including the alert volume. Some customers have complained that the low battery sound is too loud, but Apple hasn’t responded well to this. There is currently no way to adjust the low battery sound on AirPods.
You also can’t change the sound itself. It is supposed to be an alert but designed to be easy on the ears—it sounds like a “chime.”
However, if chimes aren’t to your liking, we have some bad news: You’re going to have to grin and bear it. There is also no way to turn off the alert or the actual sound itself.
So if you’re wondering whether your AirPods make a sound to warn you about low battery, they do—and there’s really no way you can change when it happens, how it happens, or what it sounds like.
Are My AirPods Batteries Worn?
Maybe you hear the sound when AirPods are low battery far too often. You’re probably wondering whether the batteries have any life left in them at all or if it’s time to invest in some new ones altogether.
AirPods use lithium-ion batteries. These are well known to “wear out” after several years, particularly if you’ve repeatedly charged them or if they’ve been “held” at the maximum battery life for too long (see the optimized charging feature of the newer AirPod Pro models mentioned above).
Phones and laptops use these batteries, so it is not unique to AirPods or even iPhones and iPads. In fact, this is a well-known issue across most modern mobile devices.
Sadly, there’s not a lot you can do about this. If you’ve been hearing that low battery sound too much, and your AirPods are more than 2-3 years old, you may just need to invest in a new pair of AirPods.
The Takeaway
You came to this article because you wanted to know whether AirPods make a sound when the battery is low. And the answer is yes, they do. We hope that these tips will help you get the most out of your battery life so that you can keep listening to your favorite music and let the conversations flow without interruption from a low battery sound!