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.
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iOS 26: Keep AirPods Connected When You Get in Your Car
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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.
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)
(BTW, it is also legal where I live)
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).
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
macrumors regular
ImperialForces
macrumors regular
I have a few choice words... However, I choose to exercise maturity and will simply give you a thumbs down instead.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
Biggest problem this solves for me is: 1. Park car with several people in it. Car remains on for A/C as it’s in a hot place. 2. I get out to pickup coffee. 3. Answer a call with AirPods whilst doing that. 4. Walk back towards car, audio transfers to the car well before I’m back at the car and the caller is left talking to the other car occupants. Not professional. Previous solution was to turn off wireless car play. Will test this new option.
Putting aside the driving with headphones chatter (not my use case), has anyone actually got this to work? I was very keen for it and have toggled it on and done a bunch of troubleshooting by this stage but it simply won’t work. Can someone confirm that it does work for them?
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Same - I can not get it to work. As soon as I get into my car (Kia Carnival, 2024) it switches to CarPlay - audio plays through speakers, even when APP3s in my ears.
It works for me, I guess you could try the tried and true method of turning it off and back on again.
Personally I’m not in the USA and in many places around the world it’s illegal ! So even if legal in « some places » I don’t think you should do this…
For security reasons, apple could have kept the things like they were.
Y’all have clearly never gone to your car without the intention to drive while wearing AirPods. Sometimes you want to grab something, or you’re going to vacuum the car and want to have headphones in. Believe me, when it switches over and you don’t want it to, it’s terribly frustrating, and it won’t stop trying either.
Thats the use case for this.
Thats the use case for this.
Useful feature. Will definitely keep this on. Happy to have control over the switching process.
First of all it is LEGAL in most places (not some).
But also, considering it is ILLEGAL to use a mobile phone while driving in just about ALL places, following your logic should Apple deactivate the phone screen while in a car for "security reasons" and allow only CarPlay functionality?
I don't even understand why there is even a discussion about this at all.
If somebody is keeping the earbuds on while entering the car, presumably they are doing so for a reason and therefore moving the connection to the car audio is undesirable.
Connection should happen automatically only the moment the earbuds are removed from the ear.
All of that said, every driver has a duty to drive responsibly and within the laws and regulations of their country.
It is not complicated.
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It's rather concerning to see wearing headphones while commuting driving a car seen as something normal that iOS support needs to be added for.
Here’s another use case no even involving driving or CarPlay, since it says it works with Bluetooth devices as well. I have a wireless Bluetooth receiver for speakers in my detached shop. Every time I am listening to my headphones and walk by the shop it switches. I have to constantly forget the device and then re connect when I want to use it again. This prevents that step. A small thing, but super helpful
... or you can be prosecuted for driving without due care and attention. That's the situation in the UK at least.
This will be so useful. I can not tell you how many times I’m on the phone talking or watching a movie while my truck is getting serviced, and my AirPods connect to my truck from time to time. I have to keep disconnecting them from my truck and it is a nuisance. This will be useful during those times and will keep my conversations private.
There are a few angry reactions around, but drivers need to ask themselves how many times they've been pissed off because a pedestrian was away with the fairies listening to their headphones and they nearly hit them as a result. Now imagine you're driving with noise-cancelling on and fail to hear an approaching siren or a pedestrian shouting an alert.