hi everyone Aaron here for zolotete and with the introduction of iOS 26 with its allnew liquid glass design updated control center and many other updates I thought we'd talk about the updates that Apple mentioned for AirPods we'll talk about the new features we'll talk about how you can install it and try it out early as well as when to expect its release and of course the supported devices and as far as supported devices this is a little bit of a disappointment for the new features you need the H2 chipset which limits it to just a few AirPods that means the AirPods 4 AirPods 4 with active noise cancellation AirPods Pro 2 both with either lightning or USBC unfortunately if you have the latest AirPods Max even with USBC you won't be able to use the latest features so that's definitely a disadvantage if you have those but with AirPods Pro 2 it looks like that's where they're making the push and you'll have all of the latest features now this feature requires a beta update as well if you want to try it out now something Apple listened to finally is if we go into our settings here within settings if we go into our normal AirPods area here if you're not already installing the update it will actually prompt you this time and say that there's a new update a beta update available if you're on iOS 26 scroll to the bottom though if you didn't see that and what you can do is go into a new menu for AirPod beta updates you no longer will have to go and connect your iPhone to a Mac and then have it connect with Xcode so that you get a developer account you can just enable it here and if you want to do that then install the update so far there's not an update button yet but you can update them the same way you typically update your AirPods all I did was listen to music for about 30 seconds went into music with them connected listened to music put them back in the case closed the case put them next to my phone locked the phone and walked away about 15 minutes or later or even less came back and it was already updated now once it was updated it did greet me with a splash screen with some of the latest features you can see those here where it says what's new in AirPods we'll talk about those in a moment with camera control sleep updates charging reminders as well as p pause media when I fall asleep and so those are the new features but let's take a look so if we go into our settings here scroll to the bottom you'll know that you're updated if we go to the bottom here and you see the firmware version of 8A279D this is on the AirPods Pro 2 with USBC and the case version I currently have is 74.5.0 the first thing Apple says that's new is some quality updates for the audio in particular with the H2 chipset and beam forming microphones they're using computational audio to allow you to get better vocal texture and clarity across iPhone calls FaceTime and Call Kit enabled apps one of the big features they showed though was that you can record highquality audio when making videos or using your device to do things like record a podcast so for example when it's connected it should have much higher quality audio so again you will need the AirPods 4 or AirPods Pro 2 and if I go ahead and connect those we'll just put them in my ears and take a listen to it so we'll go into the camera here we'll go into video and let's go ahead and record so this is now audio coming from the AirPods Pro 2 let me know what you think as far as the overall quality maybe they haven't updated it yet hopefully we'll be able to adjust this in the future as well but let me know how it sounds compared to my Hy PR40 mic so let's test that out and let me know what you think of that now to go along with the camera they've actually added some new controls here if we scroll down you'll see a new option for camera remote so they disconnected there we'll give them a second to reconnect again keep in mind it's a beta this is expected and if we go into our settings down here we have camera remote under camera remote we now can control the camera by pressing once on the stem or pressing and holding by pressing and holding or pressing once we can then activate the camera so you'll see we have them here i'll just place them in my ear and then if I press on the stem it starts recording if I press again it then stops recording if we go into the photo mode press once it will actually give me a countdown so I can get ready and then it will take a photo so again press it again gives me a countdown and then we can take the photo so that gives you an idea if you want to use that you can use that to record audio and we have that as a new option now again in our menu if we scroll down just below where we have microphone we now have a new option to pause media when falling asleep so we can enable that if we'd like where we'll just have it turn off and pause when we fall asleep and we don't know if it turns back on after you wake up but typically it will pause when you fall asleep and just turn that off so that's a nice little update if you want to use that another thing they've updated has to do with Apple CarPlay so maybe you're listening to music or maybe a podcast or audiobook and you're using your AirPods and then you go to get in your car the audio will automatically switch from the car to your AirPods you can set an option for that and it goes along with a new setting so again if we go back to our settings go to general this time under AirPlay and continuity you'll see we have an option to keep audio in headphones so it goes along with automatic switching and it says when using AirPods or other connected headphones keep audio in your headphones when other playback devices like cars and speakers connect to iPhone so it makes it much easier as you're just sort of moving around devices another update has to do with notifications right after installing iOS 26 it immediately told me that I needed to charge my AirPods 4 it was a new indication through a notification at the top and then also it told me when it was fully charged so you'll see those if you have AirPods letting you know that you need to charge them or when they're completely charged however if you're wondering if you should install the AirPods beta update along with iOS 26 beta I would highly recommend against that until the public beta currently it's definitely a little bit buggy it's in an early state and I would recommend against it as there's been some issues here and there that's not unexpected that's normal for a beta so I would just hold off if you don't have additional devices to try them on now if you are running the beta I would recommend using the feedback app letting Apple know that there's additional issues that you're having going in there and then filling out that information apple will use that if they haven't seen it before and sometimes reach out to you to try and get more information so definitely make sure you're submitting feedback and hopefully you'll have a decent experience and then they'll improve it over time as far as the public release well the public beta is supposed to be in July and then the final release to the public should be sometime in September typically in the second or third week of September around the iPhone launch that's when you can expect those as well we could have some new AirPods firmware updates in between though to address bugs or different issues but either way you should get those if you've got that enabled so let me know if you found any additional features Apple didn't mention in the comments below and of course I'll link this wallpaper in the description like I normally do if you haven't subscribed already though please subscribe and if you enjoyed the video please give it a like as always thanks for watching this is Aaron i'll see you next time [Music]