iOS 26: Keep AirPods Connected When You Get in Your Car

[WarmWinterHat]

Useless feature, it’s illegal to wear earphones while you drive.

It’s fully legal in 35 states, and you can wear earbud at a time in most of the others.

Not a good idea, but it’s rarely illegal.

 

[Wando64]

If you cannot drive safely while wearing APP in transparency or Hearing Aid mode, then you probably should not have the car audio On in the first place.

(BTW, it is also legal where I live)

 

[Two Appleseeds]

Using airpods for a call while driving and while in full transparency mode is honestly less distracting for me than trying to use a car speaker and a microphone. It makes for better audio for the person listening too. I can hear everything basically the same outside the car. I wouldn't do this with any kind of noise cancellation though (including adaptive).

 

[bg1419]

All the people screaming "you should not drive with earphones" have clearly never unlocked a CarPlay vehicle to grab something from it while on a phone call using AirPods. Or cleaned or worked on their car for a while during a phone call. Or had someone else wait in the unlocked car while running a nearby errand and calling somebody using AirPods.

In all of these cases, the call will eventually transfer to the car, and sometimes repeatedly so, depending on how the vehicle's head unit is implemented. It's super annoying.

Even just getting into the car with the intention of moving the call to the vehicle works much better this way, because the call will not be transferred the moment the head unit's CarPlay integration is started up, but maybe not active yet (or the volume setting isn't right). Instead of a few seconds (or more) of no audio and a "hello, hello?" back and forth with the person on the other end of the line, the transfer now seamlessly happens when you take the AirPods out of your ears and put them in the case, which any responsible driver of course does after having buckled up, and before driving off.

This is a great feature; thank you, Apple.

I’ve had that experience plenty of times, I think it’s very annoying and yet far less important than discouraging distracted and impaired driving.

 

[ImperialForces]

Thank God. Better late than never.

 

[ImperialForces]

Why are they adding features that encourage people to be worse drivers? This is nuts. You should never drive with headphones especially while using noise cancellations or playing loud media, people that do are ignorant and irresponsible

I have a few choice words... However, I choose to exercise maturity and will simply give you a thumbs down instead.

 

[Ctrlos]

PSA: wearing headphones whilst driving is incredibly unsafe. Anything that prevents you from hearing other road users makes you a danger to everybody else. Either turn on pass through or just use the car stereo.

 

[Colin2012]

I hope this setting also applies for hearing aids. It's more than a nuisance when the sound switches from my aids to the car speakers so I can't hear anything ... and the passengers can hear my phone call.

 

[Just_Kevin]

Great addition. Numerous times I’m doing yard work or other projects around my house where I’m in and out of the truck. Typically I’m just in the truck for a short period of time to move it or using it to move something (on my property, for the nannies). It’s annoying when the connection switches over.

 

[johnsmith162]

If you cannot drive safely while wearing APP in transparency or Hearing Aid mode, then you probably should not have the car audio On in the first place.

(BTW, it is also legal where I live)

I was going to say maybe shouldn’t drive at all 😀. More seriously though in many places the law allows exemptions for hearing assistance devices. That seems pretty wide reaching to me.