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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Your AirPods can detect if you’ve fallen asleep and pause your media.
- The AirPods possible use an accelerometer, not a coronary heart fee sensor, to detect if you’ve fallen asleep.
- The function requires a pair of AirPods Professional 2, Professional 3, or AirPods 4, and iOS 26.
If you happen to’re like me, the one place you possibly can go to sleep upright is on an airplane, however you want a pair of noise-canceling headphones to take action. More often than not, I will go to sleep throughout a “Actual Housewives” scene and get up two episodes later.
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There is a function in your iPhone’s settings that may allow some AirPods to pause your audio content material after they detect that you’ve got fallen asleep. This is how you can flip it on, and the way it labored after I tried it.
What’s AirPods sleep detection?
Within the iOS 26 software program replace, Apple carried out a brand new sleep detection function for AirPods. This function is disabled by default, so you may must entry your iPhone settings to allow it. If you happen to do, put your AirPods Professional 2, Professional 3, or AirPods 4 in your ear and play media. Your AirPods can then detect if you go to sleep and reply by pausing the media.
When your AirPods are related to your iPhone, open your telephone’s settings, faucet in your AirPods’ settings, and scroll right down to “Pause Media When Falling Asleep.”
How does it work?
I’ve solely tried the sleep detection function with the AirPods Professional 3. Every time I wore my AirPods whereas flying, I related them to my MacBook and performed my TV present. The function labored every time, as I woke as much as a sleeping MacBook, however my present was paused a couple of minutes after I fell asleep.
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Because the AirPods 4 and AirPods Professional 2 lack in-ear coronary heart fee monitoring and aren’t appropriate with this function, it is possible that the AirPods use their inside accelerometer, moderately than your coronary heart fee, to detect sleep. These accelerometers are the identical sensors which can be accountable for put on detection, the function that pauses your media if you take away an earbud from one ear.
Apple Watch additionally makes use of its accelerometer to detect if you’ve fallen asleep, counting on an absence of motion to find out if you’ve fallen asleep.
Nonetheless, not like the Apple Watch, the AirPods Professional 3 don’t passively monitor your coronary heart fee, so there isn’t any coronary heart fee knowledge for sleep in your iPhone’s Well being app if you go to sleep carrying the AirPods Professional 3 with out an Apple Watch. To trace your coronary heart fee with the Professional 3 earbuds, you have to begin a exercise within the Health app.
