Apple Reveals New Head Gestures Coming to AirPods Pro Later This Year

Apple today announced a few new features coming to AirPods Pro later this year, centering on a new ability to use head gestures in order to control the ‌AirPods Pro‌. With this feature, you can nod your head up and down, or shake it left to right, in order to answer or decline a call.

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In addition to interacting with a phone call, users will be able to use Siri Interactions to respond to messages, manage notifications, and more.

There's also a new Voice Isolation feature coming to ‌AirPods Pro‌ that removes loud background noise around you, so that the person on the other end of a call can hear you clearly. Apple also said personalized spatial audio is expanding to gaming on tvOS this year.

Finally, AirPods users will gain access to a Personalized Spatial Audio feature with dynamic head tracking that boosts gaming experiences on connected Apple devices. This will be available on AirPods 3, ‌AirPods Pro‌, and AirPods Max.

Apple said that all of these features will arrive this fall.

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Top Rated Comments

Edgecrusherr Avatar
11 months ago
I hope Gam-gam wasn't calling from the bottom of a stairwell.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
MrSimmo Avatar
11 months ago
At least we’ll only look slightly mental, nodding and shaking heads at seemingly random times in public…
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
STOCK411 Avatar
11 months ago
How dare you turn down a call from gam gam.!
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
scrapesleon Avatar
11 months ago
Does this comes to all AirPods Pro model
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
kc9hzn Avatar
11 months ago

You know, I don’t think it had noise isolation, unless that’s what the adaptive mode is supposed to be. But the adaptive mode currently just feels like a compromise between noise cancellation and transparency. If it can reduce (voice frequency) background noises while letting voice through (computational audio), then it would be sweet.

As for incoming calls, I actually get relevant calls fairly often (mostly for work related reasons). Rarely when I’m out in public (though, much to my annoyance, it did happen after hours today, got a call on Teams). I’m not sure just how useful these head gestures will be (though it’ll probably be better than telling Siri to hang up!), I’ll have to see how they actually work in practice
That said, I usually use AirPods Max during the work day, especially in the office. Apple really needs to give the AirPods Max some update love (USB-C but also all of the AirPods Pro 2 features), they’re starting to look a little neglected. For transit, there really is no beating the AirPods Pro, but, for extended stationary use, I strongly prefer overears.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
sideshowuniqueuser Avatar
11 months ago

At least we’ll only look slightly mental, nodding and shaking heads at seemingly random times in public…
I just want to know if there will be the Indian style side to side head shake?!

Nod: answer call
Shake: decline call
Bobble: take call if not spam... or...
Chucky head spin: hunt and kill caller...
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)