How To Mute Airpods (Generations 1, 2, 3, and Pro!)

AirPods are sleek and innovative earbuds many people enjoy using, but you might be wondering how to mute AirPods if you just started using them. It is customary of Apple to create electronic devices with minimal physical controls, so it’s not surprising their AirPods don’t have a straightforward mute button. It’s likely users will sometimes need to mute the volume, so knowing how to mute AirPods is quite important.

How do you mute your Airpods?

The standard way to mute AirPods is to use the mute function on your phone. Since AirPods can work with iPhones and Android phones, the specific steps to mute sound on your phone will vary. In general, you should see a mute button near the digital volume slider on your phone screen.

I’ve had great user experiences with most Apple products I’ve owned, but I’ve also had my share of frustrations learning how to use them. Many Apple devices like AirPods are designs that can be hard to figure out, but these devices often make my life easier once I get the hang of using them.

We’ll go over the steps required to mute the volume on your AirPods. Whether you have AirPods 1, AirPods 2, AirPods 3, or AirPods Pro, you’ll be able to use the same methods for muting your AirPods.

Do AirPods Have A Mute Button?

When I first heard about AirPods, I read about some control features they might have that would be convenient for playing music and other audio files.

AirPods have tap commands to play, pause, skip forward, skip backward, and other actions, but they currently do not have a built-in mute function.

At first, I was surprised by this since muting is such a key function when people listen to music, podcasts, audiobooks, and other media.

After considering the limited space and functionality Apple could pack into such a small device, it made more sense they would leave out the mute function.

When I thought further about it, muting sound is basically the same as having no sound.

Having no sound can be achieved in ways that don’t require an actual mute function to be activated.

For instance, you can have no sound by lowering your phone’s volume all the way down.

You can also have no sound by stopping or pausing your audio files.

I suppose Apple found some redundancy in adding a mute function to the AirPods when you can have no sound by activating the stop or pause function.

When I listen to the dialogue from an audiobook or podcast, I almost always prefer to pause the file instead of muting it so I can continue where I left off when I start listening again.

There may be times when a mute function for the microphone would be useful, but I think alternate options for muting are sufficient for me most of the time.

How Do I Mute AirPods?

If you want to mute AirPods in a formal way by activating an actual mute function, you need to push the digital mute button on your phone.

Most phones I’ve had don’t have a physical mute button, but if your phone happens to have one, it’d probably be faster for you to use your phone’s physical mute button.

Since the mute switch on the iPhone may not activate mute for music and other audio media, I wouldn’t consider it to be a reliable way to mute your AirPods.

We’ll go over some common ways to mute sound on your phones and therefore mute your AirPods.

Since phone models and operating systems are continuously changing, the specific steps for muting your AirPods through your phone might change over time.

Based on the extent of past volume functionality changes, it is not likely any future changes will be that different.

Use Your Phone’s Digital Controls To Mute AirPods

To use the digital method of muting your AirPods with your iPhone, go to Settings, then Sounds, then slide the volume all the way down until your AirPods are muted.

You can also load the app playing the media and lower the volume all the way down or activate the mute function on the app.

Video and streaming websites like YouTube, Vimeo, and Twitch will have volume and mute controls in their video players you can use.

Websites like these often have apps with similar volume and mute controls.

Media players within web browsers will typically have mute and volume controls that are the same or similar throughout different web browsers, operating systems, and phones.

So though it may be a hassle to mute your AirPods through a media player in your web browser, the muting functions will usually be consistent across multiple platforms.

Use Hardware Controls To Mute AirPods

Though there are no physical mute controls on AirPods, you can use other hardware to activate the mute function.

You can mute your AirPods on an iPhone by holding down the Volume Down button on the side of your phone until the sound is muted.

If your phone has a physical mute button, you can go ahead and press that to mute your AirPods.

Keep in mind that the mute switch on the side of iPhones is mainly used to mute sounds for incoming calls and notifications.

The mute switch on an iPhone may not mute alarms or media being played through your AirPods.

If you have an Android device, the physical volume controls will be similar to that of an iPhone.

You’d basically just hold down the Volume Down button until the sound is muted through your AirPods.

Phones from all companies are constantly evolving, so there may be more direct ways to mute your AirPods with physical phone controls in the future.

If consumers demand such changes to be made, there will be pressure from phone and other device makers to apply these changes to future phone releases.

Use Voice Commands To Mute AirPods

Everything from phones to dashboard consoles in cars has voice commands these days.

Using voice commands from phone features like Siri and Bixby are a great way to activate features and control settings quickly and easily.

Though I find some voice commands to be more complicated than the Airpod touch actions, using voice commands are helpful when we don’t have our hands free to physically adjust controls.

If you want to mute your AirPods through voice commands, you can activate Siri and tell it to lower the volume until it is muted.

You can perform similar voice commands on Bixby if you have an Android device.

Alternative Ways To Mute AirPods

Since the act of muting is essentially the same as removing sound, any action you can do to remove the sound from your AirPods will mute them.

Instead of pressing a button on their AirPods or your phone, you can simply remove the AirPods from your ears to mute them.

Though it may seem low-tech, removing AirPods from your ears is one of the most efficient ways to quickly mute sound, or dramatically reduce sound, going into your ears from just about any listening device.

Since other media control actions can remove sound, you can try to use other commands such as stop and pause to mute your AirPods.

Though some methods may not be considered true muting, they will still remove sound from your AirPods.