The AirPods 4, AirPods Pro and AirPods Max have active noise cancellation that filters ambient noise so you can listen to your music undisturbed. Thanks to the transparency mode, you can hear all external sounds so that you can also listen to music in traffic, for example.
You can switch between the different audio functions via the control panel on the iPhone or by using the AirPods buttons. If you are not a fan of the transparency mode, you can also choose to only use noise reduction and you can simply switch it on or off via the pressure sensor.
Adjust noise cancellation on AirPods
- Connect your AirPods to your iPhone or iPad
- Open the Settings app
- Navigate to the AirPods in the list
- Scroll down to ‘Press and Hold AirPods’
- Choose Left or Right
On the AirPods Max you can find this under the ‘Button switches between’ option in the info menu.
Then select ‘Listening mode’ and in the extra menu check the noise reduction and off options. When you now press and hold the pressure sensor, the noise-cancelling option is enabled or disabled and it no longer uses the transparency mode. This way you can also enable or disable ‘Adaptive’.
On a Mac, you can adjust this by pairing your AirPods with your Mac and navigating to  â–¸ System Settings â–¸ Bluetooth. Click on ‘options’ next to the AirPods and change the buttons.
Control changes per device
Good to know, the above settings must be adjusted per device and are therefore not stored on the Pods themselves. This means that you have to pair the AirPods with the device and change the choice via the Bluetooth settings menu of this device, for example your iPad.