A pair of Apple AirPods Pro wireless headphones and charging case, taken on November 5, 2019. (Photo … [+]
Apple AirPods Pro have multiple features including excellent noise-cancelling which is better than that from most of the competition.
Of course, you don’t always want noise cancellation on so, by a long-squeeze on the AirPods Pro’s stalk, you can switch to Transparency mode, which lets the sound of the outside world in.
You can also achieve this change via Control Center. And there’s a third way you can do this by saying, “Hey, Siri, turn off noise cancellation”. Except, right now, you can’t.
Some users are reporting that since updating to iOS 15, that this Siri command is greeted with a reply apologetically saying Siri can’t do that.
This may make some users feel they shouldn’t yet upgrade to iOS 15—and you can read the authoritative guide to this from Forbes contributor Gordon Kelly—but that is no use for anyone receiving their brand-new iPhone today, as all the iPhone 13 range handsets come with iOS 15 installed.
I didn’t hear of this issue during the beta for iOS 15, so it seems to be a brand-new hiccup.
Oh, and by the way, I’ve tried this on the new iPad mini, which arrives in stores today and which is running iPadOS 15, and the same problem is happening.
The good news is that the first update to iOS 15, iOS 15.1, is already in public beta and the problem is solved there. Of course, if you’re not a subscriber to the beta program, that will be scant help to you.
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To be clear, the other options for turning noise-cancelling on and off, via the volume icon in Control Center or squeezing the earbud’s stalk are still working, but that’s not really the point. And, after all, since iOS 15 is only days old, the likelihood is that iOS 15.1 will be weeks away. Unless Apple sneaks out a quick iOS 15.0.1 to address this issue specifically.
In other words, there’s nothing we can do for now other than wait and use the other options for now.
There is of course one benefit to using the Control Center method. When you tap on the volume icon, helpfully adorned with an image of AirPods Pro when they’re connected, the screen that opens up has another element besides noise-cancellation, which is Spatial Audio.
Turn this on, on supported content, and your audio experience is transformed, with the sound coming from all around you, it seems, not just left and right. This is worth checking out, so there’s a good reason to go to the Control Center instead of turning to Siri, at least until this is fixed.
