20 ms·

AirPods libreated from Apple's ecosystem

1424 points by moonleay 11mo ago

simonh 11mo ago
Libreated?
- stOneskull 11mo ago
  Libre!
moonleay 11mo ago
A cool project, when you want to use AirPods outside of Apples ecosystem. Sadly, you have to use a rooted android device with a small patch due to a bug in the Android Bluetooth implementation. https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/371713238 https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/371713238
- cbsks 11mo ago
  That is such a typical bug report to a large company. A user who spent a lot of time debugging and finding the root cause of an issue, and a few faceless peons at the large company spending a few minutes on it, realizing it’s not a priority, and abandoning it.
  - fragmede 11mo ago
    And not a small bug either. This large an interoperability issue and it takes a nerd not in the employ of Google to fix their shit? This is why Apple's vertical integration makes it one of richest companies in the world. Google's only up there because of their success in that one business of theirs.
    - mhluongo 11mo ago
      Funny, I was under the impression that Apple's stuff is closed source, so no one outside their employ even could fix a similar issue?
      - fragmede 11mo ago
        What does Apple being Apple have to do with Google not paying somebody to work on getting Airpods, which presumably should conform to some Bluetooth spec, in order to get Airpods to work on Android?
        catlikesshrimp 11mo ago
        >>...due to a bug in the Android Bluetooth implementation. The issue can be resolved because an android bug can be debugged by a contributor. A similar issue can't even be analyzed from the apple side by anyone but an apple employee. We are assuming there are bugs in iOS, but their closed sourceness can mislead people to believe there aren't. Then, yes, their vertical integration makes them rich, which in this case is bad for users, in the guise of being good.
      - butvacuum 11mo ago
        Apparently, android isn't fixing it either.
      - justinclift 11mo ago
        Bearing in mind that Apple does Open Source some stuff: https://opensource.apple.com/projects https://opensource.apple.com/projects They also Open Source the base OS layer pieces for macOS too: * https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/ https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/ * https://opensource.apple.com/releases/ https://opensource.apple.com/releases/ I don't keep any kind of close eye on this stuff though.
  - almostgotcaught 11mo ago
    [flagged]
  - netsharc 11mo ago
    Ah, when "open source" means begging an advertisement company to bless your code changes...
    - charcircuit 11mo ago
      It was a hack. An actual code change would be submitted via the gerrit and not buganizer. https://android-review.googlesource.com/q/status:open+-is:wip https://android-review.googlesource.com/q/status:open+-is:wi...
      - IshKebab 11mo ago
        Yeah except nobody is going to put the effort in to do that because they know it will be ignored. I tried back in the day.
    - Aurornis 11mo ago
      Not really. There wasn’t a true patch attempt submitted, as far as I can see. There was some helpful info about how commenting out a couple lines could work around the issue, but doing a real engineering evaluation to check spec compliance and make sure it’s all covered in the Bluetooth testing infrastructure is a much bigger task.
- Andrex 11mo ago
  I'm convinced it's impossible to implement the BT spec without MANY of these kinds of bugs popping up. Apple mercy-killed Adobe Flash, we should be asking they do the same to Bluetooth. I'm sick of living in a reality where no one thinks to make something better. It has to be possible.
  - SilverElfin 11mo ago
    Mercy killed? Flash was great. There were so many inventive games and animations in that era. Apple didn’t mercy kill anything - they just removed a threat to their walled garden ecosystem using their anticompetitive position, but dressed it up as a security issue.
    - baby_souffle 11mo ago
      > Flash was great. It had a great number of CVEs, you mean? _modern_ HTML and JS have eclipsed flash in all meaningful ways.
      - ezst 11mo ago
        By stitching together an inconsistent hodgepodge of sometimes overlapping languages, technologies and APIs. On the user-side, I'm glad I don't need a proprietary player for such things any longer, but I sure hate doing anything remotely touching Web, in particular for the kind of highly interactive experiences Flash was good at. In truth, the Web has eclipsed Flash, the player, but not the product.
    - Spooky23 11mo ago
      Mercy. Flash had an awesome ecosystem. But it was too fragile, and Adobe is too incompetent of a company to be a good steward of that kind of tech.
    - kalleboo 11mo ago
      Flash the authoring suite was great Flash the player was insecure unoptimized laggy garbage
    - 11mo ago
- jmgao 11mo ago
  It doesn't seem obvious to me that this is actually a bug in the Android implementation, it seems like this is due to AirPods violating the spec and requiring a special handshake before responding to standard requests. It doesn't seem reasonable to expect Android to work around a device that appears to be intentionally breaking the spec for vendor lock-in purposes: the possibility of them just OTAing an update that breaks in some other way means that you'd have to be entirely bug compatible with iOS's bluetooth implementation.
  - itsnoone 11mo ago
    It not that hard to imagine Apple going out of their way to do something that would break functionality on Android, honestly. Although, I believe Fluoride also is to be blamed here because a simple timeout can not possible cause any issues (it seems that a timeout is there, but never called- at least from my tinkering). I am not planning to spend a single second tracing back the actual problem and suggesting a fix, given that Google just asked me to reproduce twice (!!) and did nothing about it.
  - a13n 11mo ago
    is there evidence it’s for vendor lock in purposes? airpods have a pretty stellar connection for bluetooth, wouldn’t be surprised if there were performance reasons for them going off spec
    - indentit 11mo ago
      Specifications are there for a reason... Why use Bluetooth at all if they don't actually use it properly?
      - helsinkiandrew 11mo ago
        You can still connect AirPods to an android device using Bluetooth, you just don’t get the seamless connection or support for Spatial Audio that use the extended protocols
        11mo ago
- WithinReason 11mo ago
  Last 2 comments: > Need fix please > original engineers got laid off thats why
- KolibriFly 11mo ago
  Still, it's kind of amazing that one person hacked around both Apple's walled garden and Android's jank to make this work at all
  - worldsavior 11mo ago
    It's not really hard to reverse engineer AirPods. Just watch the bluetooth communication between a mac and the AirPods, turn specific features on/off, see how it reacts, then replicate exactly. I wanted to do it myself but saw something like this already exists (librepods, previously called "Airpods like normal (aln)").
- dotancohen 11mo ago
  Any idea how much latency there is between the beginning of audio being played in an app, and it then coming out the headset? I use wired headphones to study with Anki (AnkiDroid) because I've found most (inexpensive) Bluetooth headphones require a second or two to begin playing. As I'm dealing with short audio clips, this use case necessitates restarting the "audio playing" situation every few seconds. Maybe the app developers could "play" quiet audio between these short clips. But barring such a development, I'd like to know if higher quality headphones might suffer from less latency in this regard.
  - frumiousirc 11mo ago
    > I use wired headphones to study with Anki (AnkiDroid) because I've found most (inexpensive) Bluetooth headphones require a second or two to begin playing. 1-2 seconds is an eon for audio latency so I guess something else is going on than anything BT related in the headphones. Unless you have particularly bad luck in what headphones you use. FWIW, I use a variety of cheap and not so cheap BT headphones across multiple devices and apps including AnkiDroid and have not perceived any latency. If switching to wired removes the latency then it does seem to indicate something in the BT stack of your device. I wonder if you experience the lag when using AnkiDroid + BT on another device.
    - dotancohen 11mo ago
      Thank you. I actually have since switched devices, but have not yet tested on the new device. The old device was a flagship phone, the Note 10 Lite. That phone served me well for four years, I'll test on the S24 Ultra that just replaced it. Thank you.
  - AshamedCaptain 11mo ago
    This is your host idling the connection due to the silence. Just keep something playing (like a stream of almost-silence) on loop and you won't have this problem.
    - dotancohen 11mo ago
t1234s 11mo ago
This excellent.. there needs to be a macos version as well. Using Mavericks I was unable to adjust any settings on my airpods pro 2
- Wowfunhappy 11mo ago
  I can’t get my Airpods Pro 2 to connect to Mavericks at all for any length of time, this has been driving me nuts for years! They’ll connect and play audio for a few seconds, then cut out, and I’ll have to re-pair to get any audio again. Did you have to do anything special?
- itsnoone 11mo ago
  i don't think macos allows l2cap connections (the protocol that airpods use), at least pybluez doesn't support that on macos which would've made making a simple script a lot simpler.
  - krackers 11mo ago
    Does this not do what you want? https://developer.apple.com/documentation/iobluetooth/iobluetoothl2capchannel https://developer.apple.com/documentation/iobluetooth/ioblue...
- varenc 11mo ago
  Check out AirBuddy for something that provides similar control in macOS. Closed source and costs money though. It doesn't need to rely on the reverse engineered protocol, and instead just calls out to macOS APIs to manipulate the Airpods. (I presume)
  - Wowfunhappy 11mo ago
    Not going to help on Mavericks, which doesn’t have those APIs.
wslh 11mo ago
Excellent project, don't forget to upvote the Android bluetooth bug to give a signal: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/371713238?pli=1 https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/371713238?pli=1
- teraflop 11mo ago
  Given that it's already the most upvoted open Android framework bug, and the Google employee it's assigned to hasn't touched it in almost a year, it seems unlikely that more upvotes will make any difference whatsoever.
  - wslh 11mo ago
    I agree, but chance favors the tickets that someone internally champions, and there are plenty of Googlers lurking here.
  - paxys 11mo ago
    In such cases it's always better to just open a new identical bug and hope it gets assigned to someone more interested/competent, and no one notices it's a dupe before that.
  - ufmace 11mo ago
    Where's the meme of the guy who gets hired on to a tech company, fixes one bug that always annoyed them, then quits immediately
    - zoover2020 11mo ago
      Geohot at Twitter
      - wslh 11mo ago
        A no-nobody: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hotz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hotz
  - whatevertrevor 11mo ago
DerekL 11mo ago
Title has a typo, should be “liberated”. Edit: I noticed that the article's page title is also misspelled this way.
- bradfitz 11mo ago
  I assume it's intentional, playing on "libre" (as in libre software, not just gratis software)
  - thaumasiotes 11mo ago
    As just the biggest problem with that idea, the typo doesn't exist on the page. It's in the HN title, and the page's HTML <title> tag.
    - flexagoon 11mo ago
      It does exist on the page. It's in the description of the repository below the repository name.
      - thaumasiotes 11mo ago
        Look again. You're right that the text you're thinking of used to be in that space, if you mean the "About" blurb. But you're not right about the page contents. The "About" is github metadata, just like the partial commit message "android: multidevice capabilites and accessiblit..." that you can also find. And just like that message, it was full of typos because it's not public-facing. But there is an actual page talking about the project, which is what we're all commenting on here, and which never contained the typo.
      - itsnoone 11mo ago
        yup it did- fixed it now. thanks!
- I_dream_of_Juma 11mo ago
  Funny, I once called out a typo and got ridiculed and downvoted into oblivion. Seems it goes against HN terms of service or something...
aboardRat4 11mo ago
Aren't airpods just bluetooth headphones?
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- DrewADesign 11mo ago
  For just listening to music, yeah. They’ve got other features that aren’t supported elsewhere, though.
  - fragmede 11mo ago
    specifically, configuring noise cancelation or transparency mode, as well as multiple different profiles for microphone usage. plus buttons on the airpods themselves. Still baffles me why the first gen airpod "button" wasn't the winner, but unfortunately Steve's no longer with us.
- isodev 11mo ago
  Apple doesn’t make anything that’s “just <standard protocol>”. Something needs to make it very expensive and feel exclusive… Yes, you can have AirPods with noise cancellation, but you need a 1k€ iPhone to go with that.
  - josteink 11mo ago
    Incorrect. AirPods noise cancellation can be controlled by holding the AirPod stalk. And that’s not an excuse or a workaround: That’s how I always do it. I’ve never bothered doing it through software on my iDevices, because that’s much more cumbersome.
    - zoover2020 11mo ago
      The ANC doesn't work on non iOS or macOS/iPadOS devices, though. Holding the stalk won't work
losthubble 11mo ago
How much effort would it take to get this working on Windows?
- itsnoone 11mo ago
  see MagicPods. although, it's paid, and requires windows to be in test mode to install a driver for L2CAP support. microsoft has decided to not allow l2c for userspace applications.
- OsrsNeedsf2P 11mo ago
  You might be able to get it working via WSL
Scene_Cast2 11mo ago
Super cool. Also, this is an example of why having an open OS is awesome.
WD-42 11mo ago
Cool project, not cool that it needs to exist. Apple isn’t only content to leech off OSS software, they have to force the existence of more of it to workaround what they closed off.
- blackqueeriroh 11mo ago
  Uhhhh, Apple donates a ton of code to OSS
  - WD-42 11mo ago
    When the license legally compels them to, and sometimes not even then.
    - Razengan 11mo ago
      Look up Swift
      - bloppe 11mo ago
        You mean the language that approximately nobody uses outside XCode, which requires you to register an Apple developer account to function? The same language that only switched to an OSS license after they realized nobody wanted to contribute to a proprietary language? Swift is OSS, but it's not a great example to illustrate your point.
        raw_anon_1111 11mo ago
        Swift went open source the day it was released. I don’t think Apple needs outside contributors. I think it has enough resources that it would be okay Darwin’s underlying code was BSD license and didn’t require releasing source code.
        bloppe 11mo ago
        "[Swift] was initially a proprietary language, but version 2.2 was made open-source software under the Apache License 2.0 on December 3, 2015" Darwin is also a bad example: "On July 25, 2006, the OpenDarwin team announced that the project was shutting down, as they felt OpenDarwin had "become a mere hosting facility for Mac OS X related projects", and that the efforts to create a standalone Darwin operating system had failed.[40] They also state: "Availability of sources, interaction with Apple representatives, difficulty building and tracking sources, and a lack of interest from the community have all contributed to this."[41]" "PureDarwin is a project to create a bootable operating system image from Apple's released source code for Darwin.[43] Since the halt of OpenDarwin and the release of bootable images since Darwin 8.x, it has been increasingly difficult to create a full operating system as many components became closed source."
toenail 11mo ago
Huh? I've used all my airpods with my linux and android systems.. nothing was liberated.. just more features were added
hollow-moe 11mo ago
Been using it with my airpods 3 anc on a pixel with custom rom (what a curious setup thinking about it). And it's good enough but kinda annoying the airpods don't seem to save my configs and connection isn't really stable. Not complaining since they're not even supposed to be supported tho, thanks for the free stuff ! I wonder if I'd be able to contribute better support with my very limited knowledge of bluetooth analysis...
- itsnoone 11mo ago
  hey, do you have the 'act as apple device' hook enabled perhaps? that sometimes causes connections to drop. other than that, i believe i refactored the background service to store metadata about the airpods and support various model types recently which can make the app a bit unstable, hence no new release yet- the build is available to download from Actions. if you're facing unstability on the latest (pre)release, v0.2.0-alpha open a issue, i will have a look whenever i get the time. about the configs not being saved- do you mean the conversational awareness, adaptive volume etc.? those should be saved, and sent from airpods every time you connect. so if you change the config from any other device, and connect to your phone then the app should show the new config. you can contirbute by supporting the development, of course! :)
jadar 11mo ago
Super impressive. Looks like the author also reimplemented Apple’s new Liquid Glads UI in Jetpack Compose?
- SV_BubbleTime 11mo ago
  I don’t know what the other UI options are, but that seems like a step backwards.
Razengan 11mo ago
Huh? I was always able to use AirPods with the Nintendo Switch, for example. Even share them with friends' phones. I didn't know they required "liberating" but good news I suppose. I wish their displays could be liberated though
mannanj 11mo ago
[flagged]
- SV_BubbleTime 11mo ago
  Go on… you want ionizing emitters near your brain? Unlike others here, I’m keeping an open mind for now, but do not know what you are talking about.
  - mannanj 11mo ago
    They're both bad for you.
    - SV_BubbleTime 11mo ago
      You should learn about the relative powers of light, radio, and what natural radio emissions you are exposed to. You know… basic research if you had an opinion on this topic.
      - mannanj 10mo ago
        I learned in my Electrical Engineering degree. You want a basic research task? Take your Wifi router and every phone in your home, and put it right next to your head when you sleep for 7+ nights - report back to me when you're sick of the headaches.
- mock-possum 11mo ago
  Your psuedoscientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should!
  - mannanj 11mo ago
    I see you prefer Straw man and ad hominem over engaging on the merits. No thank you to your toxicity and negativity.
wewewedxfgdf 11mo ago
Tim Apple will not be happy about this.
- raw_anon_1111 11mo ago
  You’re right. People outside of the Apple ecosystem might by high margin AirPods!!!
  - amelius 11mo ago
    Why would they? Apple will simply plug the hole in the next version.
    - raw_anon_1111 11mo ago
      Because Apple likes money. If you want to buy an AirPod, Apple is not going to stop you.
jwr 11mo ago
This is needed even if you are IN the Apple ecosystem. I don't want to upgrade my phone to the latest half-baked iOS version, so Apple purposefully degrades the functionality of my new AirPods 3. Siri won't switch noise cancellation modes, I can't see the battery status, they get relegated to the "generic bluetooth device" section, and even the battery widget will display three identical headphone icons for headphones and the case. How do I know this is done purposefully and not just because AirPods 3 are so new and different from AirPods 2? Well, macOS has been neglected of late, and Apple didn't find the time to break things there, so Airpods 3 work with macOS just as well as Airpods 2 did — switching modes, battery status display, etc. It's very disappointing, and not a great customer experience.
- 650REDHAIR 11mo ago
  I have been slowly moving away from Apple devices and the 15 Pro will likely be my last iPhone. The “it just works” argument keeps falling apart. I’ve already moved over to Linux for my laptop and desktop experience. I only use my iPad to remote into my desktop at this point and use it as my travel laptop. Turns out I don’t really need an iPad.
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 11mo ago
Don't the Beats earbuds have literally the exact the same chipsets and speaker drivers as airpods, but play way nicer with Androids? I know that used to be the case a few years ago at least, but I'm not sure if it's still true.
andrewchambers 11mo ago
Mark Zuckerberg explicitly called out the airpod pairing being closed as unfair in a semi recent interview, maybe he can throw some dollars that way and get it all working nicely in some meta products.
- stavros 11mo ago
  It's not up to a third party to invest into opening up Apple's purposely locked-down ecosystem.
  - mft_ 11mo ago
    …unless someone has sufficient time and/or money to spend on it, and wants to do so as a point of principle. If I had large amounts of spare money, I’d love to seed small endeavours that (according to my personal world view) made the world incrementally better. As has been noted before, what’s the point of having ‘FU money’ if you don’t use it to say ‘FU’ now and again?
    - stavros 11mo ago
      Yeah, but saying "maybe super rich people will do random illogical things" isn't really a great argument. For all we know, Mark Zuckerberg wants to spend his "fuck you" money locking the ecosystem down even more, as a "fuck you" to consumers.
- thewebguyd 11mo ago
  That's backwards. It's not AirPods being closed that's unfair. Apple should be able to sell first party tech that only works with their own products. What's unfair is Apple locking everyone else out. Not allowing or documenting for third parties to use the same APIs to enable something like automatic device switching in third party bluetooth headphones is the unfair part. Same goes for the watch. That the Apple Watch only works with iPhone isn't the problem. The problem is no other third party is able to make a smartwatch that competes on an level playing field with the Apple Watch on Apple Devices, because Apple locks them out. lock-out is the unfair problem.
rvz 11mo ago
Great project
- amelius 11mo ago
  I wonder why people keep pouring energy into this bottomless pit of a vendor locker. Surely, Apple will close this hole in the next version. They're a user-hostile company. I stopped bothering with it years ago. Yes, their hardware might be slightly better than the competition, but the difference is not earth-shattering. Certainly not worth all the trouble and uncertainty of what will happen next year when Apple improves their vendor locking. My advice: stop feeding the beast, and start owning your hardware!
ChrisArchitect 11mo ago
A Show HN: thread submitted by the dev earlier in the year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42610644 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42610644
ChrisArchitect 11mo ago
A Show HN: thread submitted by the dev earlier in the year, without traction here, but some background details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42610644 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42610644
hsbauauvhabzb 11mo ago
AirPods are my favourite headphones by a mile. I’d love to get microphone mode working on Linux without the audio sounding terrible. I’d also be curious if anyone can offer insight on why the range is so much better when paired with my iPhone than my computer.
- itsnoone 11mo ago
  Apple devices uses their own codec, which isn't even supported on macOS, that supports high definition two-way streaming
wodenokoto 11mo ago
I’m trying to connect my airports pro 2 to my old, old 2011 iPod. It’s not going very well. While I haven’t managed to find anything close to an answer using google, chatgpt is quite confident it’s because of Bluetooth versions. Surely Bluetooth 5 is backwards compatible, but then again if the AirPods thinks it’s connected to an iOS device it seems reasonable that it will start using all the proprietary iOS features and then communication breaks down. So to me, liberation of airpods is an on-device issue.
cncjchsue7 11mo ago
There is much better and much cheaper non apple air pods these days.
- paulddraper 11mo ago
  Precisely this. Lots of superior options. (I say this as someone who has AirPods but didn’t know any better.)
  - jaysonelliot 11mo ago
    Which ones do you prefer?
    - Intermernet 11mo ago
      Both the Bose and Sony offerings are, in my opinion, better sound quality and better noise cancellation than AirPods.
- halapro 11mo ago
  > much better Citation needed
- noman-land 11mo ago
  Many people are gifted a pair.
- Towaway69 11mo ago
  A list please Just putting out that statement is kind of “ok and now”?
notsylver 11mo ago
It seems to let you access head tracking data, so now I'm really curious if it would be accurate enough to use with games (eg, microsoft flight sim/arma 3/euro truck simulator 2 head tracking). There is probably a lot of other interesting use cases for it too, but I'm stuck with windows for now so :(
- postalcoder 11mo ago
  There was a show hn a couple months ago that demonstrated that it could be used for a game. It worked better than I expected. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45362365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45362365
- itsnoone 11mo ago
  the head gestures is something i couldn't quite figure out, so the gesture logic is completely AI generated. i don't know how to get the actual values from the sensors. but there sure is a use in gaming.
avlbk 11mo ago
This type of project makes me want to click the sponsor repo button on github. Amazing work!
isoprophlex 11mo ago
From a bit further down the page > Bluetooth DID (Device Identification) Hook > Turns out, if you change the manufacturerid to that of Apple, you get access to several special features! I hope Apple gets slammed hard by some regulatory body. Apparently there's absolutely zero magic reasons why their airpods are unable to connect to non-Apple devices; pretend you're an iPhone and you're in. EDIT: read "unable to connect" => "unable to expose advanced functionality", ofc they connect just fine
- matwood 11mo ago
  > Apparently there's absolutely zero magic reasons why their airpods are unable to connect to non-Apple devices I've had almost all of the versions of AirPods and AirPod Pros and they have connected to non-Apple devices just fine.
  - bartvk 11mo ago
    Yup, I've got an old pair connected to my Steam Deck. Works fine.
  - realusername 11mo ago
    Personally I've tried the ones of my wife on my Galaxy S23 and I have frequent audio cuts, since it's the only Bluetooth device I've ever experienced that, there's some shenanigans for sure in their firmware.
    - maccard 11mo ago
      I had a slightly older galaxy as my last android phone, and had this problem with the galaxy buds and with the anker ones I got to replace them. My experience with audio on android (Samsung and pixel) was overwhelmingly “this sucks” so I’m more inclined to blame android than apple here
      - realusername 11mo ago
        Personally I never had any audio issues at all apart from pairing (but I also had this issue on iPhone, this is a general case of Bluetooth pairing sucks)
toast0 11mo ago
How does this interact with Apple Find My? Will it mean if my kid travels with their phone (Android) and their AirPods and me/my phone (Android), I won't get a message about being tracked anymore? That would be nice.
DeathArrow 11mo ago
Now I would like to see a software to unlock features for Tesla. You payed for the car, why pay subscriptions?
- Synaesthesia 11mo ago
  Jailbreak the Tesla. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWQL_XORalY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWQL_XORalY
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
throwaway2037 11mo ago
Hi. I'm not here to troll. This is an amazing project. Why did they select AGPL license over just plain ol' GPL? It seems hard to imagine where the "A" is useful for this software.
- timschmidt 11mo ago
  Lots of folks see the network provisions of AGPL as kind of like the anti-tivoization clause in GPLv3. I.e. patching flaws / loopholes found in GPLv2. In that sense, AGPLv3 is "the most GPL" that can be GPL'd and so it is attractive to folks who lean in that licensing direction. Never know how code will be put to use in the future.
- itsnoone 11mo ago
  The developer here- I didn't plan to release an app for android, or even linux. The android app just started out as a personal project. My plan was to make a service for linux that can talk to various headphones, and any UI can talk to the service. And this was supposed to be under AGPL. But, as I graudally reverse-engineered most of the protocol from the bluetooth stack on macOS, I decided to release the app for Android and make one for linux as well. Going to change it to GPL, though. never paid attention to the license in use as I developed.
  - throwaway2037 11mo ago
    Thanks for the direct reply. I didn't consider the SaaS angle when I wrote my original post. As a result, your initial license choice makes sense. Also, if you are in control of copyright for all of the source code, then you can easily change the license. I am still blown away by how you did it. It must have been a lot of reverse engineering! Hats off -- keep up the good work.
bloqs 11mo ago
im all for corporate witchhunts, but airpods have been one of the moat universally compatible items Apple has made out of the box?
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
pjmlp 11mo ago
I have been using AirPods with Android phones for several years now.
Luker88 11mo ago
OT, but I am as disappointed in the firwmare of Apple airpods as I am in the one of Pine64 for their pinebuds. The first is not hackable and the second promised much and delivered just an initial dump with dubious sdk license
roman_soldier 11mo ago
A lot of Apple products are designed to best work with other Apple products, that's part of their selling point. Would it not be easier to just buy non Apple headphones if you are not in the Apple eco system?
- frodo_torcuato 11mo ago
  I guess that’s fair. But it’s also possible that you already own an iPhone + AirPods, and you wanna buy a new non-Apple phone
- torben-friis 11mo ago
  If it’s vertical integration producing results, that’s all right. If it’s consciously kneecapping the device for all manufacturers except yours, it’s not a practice beneficial to anyone but monopolies, so consumer laws should prevent it. This repo seems to prove the case of AirPods is closer to the latter.
- KolibriFly 11mo ago
  Yet if someone likes the sound quality, fit, or ANC of AirPods (which are genuinely good), why should they lose out on functionality just because they're not using an iPhone?
  - nerbert 11mo ago
    I'm all for everything being compatible with everything, but why should apple invest resources in testing/debugging android compatibility for something that they make?
    - StopDisinfo910 11mo ago
      There is a vast difference between testing and debugging and not intentionally making your product worse when on a standard BT connection which is basically what Apple is doing.
      - 11mo ago
KolibriFly 11mo ago
It's wild how many features Apple locks down purely via software, even though you paid a premium for the hardware
olirex99 11mo ago
Companies are doing some crazy stuff to block other devices. One of the worst things that I have seen is that on MacOS you cannot use the AirPods in a Microsoft Teams call.
- KolenCh 11mo ago
  I’ve been using AirPods in macOS in Microsoft Teams call all the time.
- pta2002 11mo ago
  Seconding the other user saying that I also use AirPods Pro (2nd gen) in Teams at least twice a day, on macOS, iOS, and Windows (and had used them on android before, as well). Absolutely no issue whatsoever, and everyone mentions I usually have by far the best audio out of anyone else in the call. What would Apple even gain out of this? They don’t have a competitor to MS Teams, FaceTime is hardly targeting the same segment.
- als0 11mo ago
  I use them on Teams on macOS (and Windows) every day and is the main reason I have them. What you say is simply not true.
- trueno 11mo ago
  I’ve used virtually every version of AirPods with Microsoft teams, including AirPod maxes. I use AirPods with teams calls every day. Let’s definitely not pretend like Teams isn’t the crappiest app in the Milky Way. Any user issues can be squarely placed on Microsoft teams with confidence. Actual garbage app.
HellsMaddy 11mo ago
This is awesome on Linux. I've wanted to see my battery status forever, and the ability to pause when you remove an AirPod is really nice too.
darkest_ruby 11mo ago
Require rooted android? That makes it useless for 99% of us
dubeye 11mo ago
I've gifted multiple pairs of AirPods to android users and they all seem to work fine
Synaesthesia 11mo ago
Can someone please figure out how to make my AirPods Pro 2 work with my MacBook Pro M1? Because they just don't work.
Demiurge 11mo ago
This is awesome. I wish we had real EQ on the iOS. Ideally PEQ.
villgax 11mo ago
Apart from being absolutely unusable on any actually used Android phone, very weird that the author didnt bother to have any write up of how they actually did this, not really sure if its a rip off of the CAPods repo, will have to confirm that later
bigstrat2003 11mo ago
Who is buying these that isn't an Apple fanatic? If you aren't a fanboy, then any old pair of earbuds is both cheaper and better than AirPods.
peatmoss 11mo ago
Tunable transparency mode sounds great, and I wish Apple would do something like this as first-party support. As a casual trombone player, who often plays in louder settings, the airpods pro are almost excellent hearing protection. Passive (even "audiophile" or "concert") earplugs make me feel like I'm under water. Airpods Pro attenuate a lot of sound but don't feel so unnatural. Unfortunately, they tend to drop my own sound out of the mix when sounds around me get louder. I'd love a mode that selectively let in more trombone frequencies, or better, that mixed noise cancellation and transparency to give me more of a studio monitor effect. Maybe the airpods could figure out which sounds were mine via the buzzing sounds that propagate through my head from my lips.
- itsnoone 11mo ago
  apple doesn't allow much customization, only the 9 presets under accessibility>hearing>headphone accomodation. this eq then also applies to the audio played and transparency settings both. maybe one of those nine presets suits your needs?
joeevans1000 11mo ago
I've wanted to try AirPods for my dad as hearing aids, but haven't done so because he would have to have the iPhone on hand. He's too old and blind to operate an iPhone. Can anyone here tell me how to take this awesome repo and make a hearing aid possibility for him with a simpler interface?
- itsnoone 11mo ago
  setting up hearing aids is a one time thing. then, the main adjustment is the amplification, which can be controlled by swiping on the stem. there is no need for an iphone for using it as hearing aids.
seemaze 11mo ago
What realllly irks me is that Apple did not even make the new AirPods Pro 3 backwards compatible with iOS 18. Features that are available with the AirPods Pro 2 on iOS 18 were not available with the APP3. SAME iOS device, SAME H2 chip, but I was forced to upgrade to (the dumptser fire of a release) iOS 26 to maintain feature parity with the APP2 in an all Apple ecosystem. So f*ing steamed. Still. And Apple support had no clue and kept telling me it should all 'Just Work'.
erickhill 11mo ago
Would be cool to decouple Apple Watches from iPhones, too.
12345hn6789 11mo ago
Requires your phone to be rooted.
semireg 11mo ago
“Do you want to sell AirPods?” No. They want to sell more i-devices so this is just punishment for not fully participating.
bunabhucan 11mo ago
Where did the "libREated" in the title come from?
- slater 11mo ago
  likely a misspelling of "liberated"?
- amatecha 11mo ago
  I came here to see what the deal was because I'm surprised this typo is still present a day later XD
- clemiclemen 11mo ago
  It comes from the GitHub repo description. There is a typo though but this is maybe intentional as the name of the repo is librepods
- itsnoone 11mo ago
  It was a typo in the GH repo description, fixed it.
ge96 11mo ago
Tangent, sound does take knowledge obv to setup to sound good. I remember flashing the Pine64 Pine Buds and man I could not get them to sound right aside from the original settings. They were not great to begin with but yeah. The UI looks great
jjkaczor 11mo ago
hmmm... so, I have been tempted to investigate Airpods for heading aid use, as the "medical" ones I have now are complete garbage for doing anything on my phone - they regularly forget their bluetooth sync status, they do not have enough volume to watch media on the phone - and when it comes to music, they are laughably horrible. But... in my country, Apple Airpods are not certified as "hearing aids", so that functionality is blocked... Perhaps with this, I will have an Android phone in my future...

1424 points by moonleay 11mo ago

simonh 11mo ago

Libreated?

stOneskull 11mo ago
Libre!

moonleay 11mo ago

A cool project, when you want to use AirPods outside of Apples ecosystem. Sadly, you have to use a rooted android device with a small patch due to a bug in the Android Bluetooth implementation. https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/371713238 https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/371713238

cbsks 11mo ago
That is such a typical bug report to a large company. A user who spent a lot of time debugging and finding the root cause of an issue, and a few faceless peons at the large company spending a few minutes on it, realizing it’s not a priority, and abandoning it.
- fragmede 11mo ago
  And not a small bug either. This large an interoperability issue and it takes a nerd not in the employ of Google to fix their shit? This is why Apple's vertical integration makes it one of richest companies in the world. Google's only up there because of their success in that one business of theirs.
  - mhluongo 11mo ago
    Funny, I was under the impression that Apple's stuff is closed source, so no one outside their employ even could fix a similar issue?
    - fragmede 11mo ago
      What does Apple being Apple have to do with Google not paying somebody to work on getting Airpods, which presumably should conform to some Bluetooth spec, in order to get Airpods to work on Android?
      - catlikesshrimp 11mo ago
        >>...due to a bug in the Android Bluetooth implementation. The issue can be resolved because an android bug can be debugged by a contributor. A similar issue can't even be analyzed from the apple side by anyone but an apple employee. We are assuming there are bugs in iOS, but their closed sourceness can mislead people to believe there aren't. Then, yes, their vertical integration makes them rich, which in this case is bad for users, in the guise of being good.
    - butvacuum 11mo ago
      Apparently, android isn't fixing it either.
    - justinclift 11mo ago
      Bearing in mind that Apple does Open Source some stuff: https://opensource.apple.com/projects https://opensource.apple.com/projects They also Open Source the base OS layer pieces for macOS too: * https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/ https://github.com/apple-oss-distributions/ * https://opensource.apple.com/releases/ https://opensource.apple.com/releases/ I don't keep any kind of close eye on this stuff though.
- almostgotcaught 11mo ago
  [flagged]
- netsharc 11mo ago
  Ah, when "open source" means begging an advertisement company to bless your code changes...
  - charcircuit 11mo ago
    It was a hack. An actual code change would be submitted via the gerrit and not buganizer. https://android-review.googlesource.com/q/status:open+-is:wip https://android-review.googlesource.com/q/status:open+-is:wi...
    - IshKebab 11mo ago
      Yeah except nobody is going to put the effort in to do that because they know it will be ignored. I tried back in the day.
  - Aurornis 11mo ago
    Not really. There wasn’t a true patch attempt submitted, as far as I can see. There was some helpful info about how commenting out a couple lines could work around the issue, but doing a real engineering evaluation to check spec compliance and make sure it’s all covered in the Bluetooth testing infrastructure is a much bigger task.
Andrex 11mo ago
I'm convinced it's impossible to implement the BT spec without MANY of these kinds of bugs popping up. Apple mercy-killed Adobe Flash, we should be asking they do the same to Bluetooth. I'm sick of living in a reality where no one thinks to make something better. It has to be possible.
- SilverElfin 11mo ago
  Mercy killed? Flash was great. There were so many inventive games and animations in that era. Apple didn’t mercy kill anything - they just removed a threat to their walled garden ecosystem using their anticompetitive position, but dressed it up as a security issue.
  - baby_souffle 11mo ago
    > Flash was great. It had a great number of CVEs, you mean? _modern_ HTML and JS have eclipsed flash in all meaningful ways.
    - ezst 11mo ago
      By stitching together an inconsistent hodgepodge of sometimes overlapping languages, technologies and APIs. On the user-side, I'm glad I don't need a proprietary player for such things any longer, but I sure hate doing anything remotely touching Web, in particular for the kind of highly interactive experiences Flash was good at. In truth, the Web has eclipsed Flash, the player, but not the product.
  - Spooky23 11mo ago
    Mercy. Flash had an awesome ecosystem. But it was too fragile, and Adobe is too incompetent of a company to be a good steward of that kind of tech.
  - kalleboo 11mo ago
    Flash the authoring suite was great Flash the player was insecure unoptimized laggy garbage
  - 11mo ago
jmgao 11mo ago
It doesn't seem obvious to me that this is actually a bug in the Android implementation, it seems like this is due to AirPods violating the spec and requiring a special handshake before responding to standard requests. It doesn't seem reasonable to expect Android to work around a device that appears to be intentionally breaking the spec for vendor lock-in purposes: the possibility of them just OTAing an update that breaks in some other way means that you'd have to be entirely bug compatible with iOS's bluetooth implementation.
- itsnoone 11mo ago
  It not that hard to imagine Apple going out of their way to do something that would break functionality on Android, honestly. Although, I believe Fluoride also is to be blamed here because a simple timeout can not possible cause any issues (it seems that a timeout is there, but never called- at least from my tinkering). I am not planning to spend a single second tracing back the actual problem and suggesting a fix, given that Google just asked me to reproduce twice (!!) and did nothing about it.
- a13n 11mo ago
  is there evidence it’s for vendor lock in purposes? airpods have a pretty stellar connection for bluetooth, wouldn’t be surprised if there were performance reasons for them going off spec
  - indentit 11mo ago
    Specifications are there for a reason... Why use Bluetooth at all if they don't actually use it properly?
    - helsinkiandrew 11mo ago
      You can still connect AirPods to an android device using Bluetooth, you just don’t get the seamless connection or support for Spatial Audio that use the extended protocols
      - 11mo ago
WithinReason 11mo ago
Last 2 comments: > Need fix please > original engineers got laid off thats why
KolibriFly 11mo ago
Still, it's kind of amazing that one person hacked around both Apple's walled garden and Android's jank to make this work at all
- worldsavior 11mo ago
  It's not really hard to reverse engineer AirPods. Just watch the bluetooth communication between a mac and the AirPods, turn specific features on/off, see how it reacts, then replicate exactly. I wanted to do it myself but saw something like this already exists (librepods, previously called "Airpods like normal (aln)").
dotancohen 11mo ago
Any idea how much latency there is between the beginning of audio being played in an app, and it then coming out the headset? I use wired headphones to study with Anki (AnkiDroid) because I've found most (inexpensive) Bluetooth headphones require a second or two to begin playing. As I'm dealing with short audio clips, this use case necessitates restarting the "audio playing" situation every few seconds. Maybe the app developers could "play" quiet audio between these short clips. But barring such a development, I'd like to know if higher quality headphones might suffer from less latency in this regard.
- frumiousirc 11mo ago
  > I use wired headphones to study with Anki (AnkiDroid) because I've found most (inexpensive) Bluetooth headphones require a second or two to begin playing. 1-2 seconds is an eon for audio latency so I guess something else is going on than anything BT related in the headphones. Unless you have particularly bad luck in what headphones you use. FWIW, I use a variety of cheap and not so cheap BT headphones across multiple devices and apps including AnkiDroid and have not perceived any latency. If switching to wired removes the latency then it does seem to indicate something in the BT stack of your device. I wonder if you experience the lag when using AnkiDroid + BT on another device.
  - dotancohen 11mo ago
    Thank you. I actually have since switched devices, but have not yet tested on the new device. The old device was a flagship phone, the Note 10 Lite. That phone served me well for four years, I'll test on the S24 Ultra that just replaced it. Thank you.
- AshamedCaptain 11mo ago
  This is your host idling the connection due to the silence. Just keep something playing (like a stream of almost-silence) on loop and you won't have this problem.
  - dotancohen 11mo ago

t1234s 11mo ago

This excellent.. there needs to be a macos version as well. Using Mavericks I was unable to adjust any settings on my airpods pro 2

Wowfunhappy 11mo ago
I can’t get my Airpods Pro 2 to connect to Mavericks at all for any length of time, this has been driving me nuts for years! They’ll connect and play audio for a few seconds, then cut out, and I’ll have to re-pair to get any audio again. Did you have to do anything special?
itsnoone 11mo ago
i don't think macos allows l2cap connections (the protocol that airpods use), at least pybluez doesn't support that on macos which would've made making a simple script a lot simpler.
- krackers 11mo ago
  Does this not do what you want? https://developer.apple.com/documentation/iobluetooth/iobluetoothl2capchannel https://developer.apple.com/documentation/iobluetooth/ioblue...
varenc 11mo ago
Check out AirBuddy for something that provides similar control in macOS. Closed source and costs money though. It doesn't need to rely on the reverse engineered protocol, and instead just calls out to macOS APIs to manipulate the Airpods. (I presume)
- Wowfunhappy 11mo ago
  Not going to help on Mavericks, which doesn’t have those APIs.

wslh 11mo ago

Excellent project, don't forget to upvote the Android bluetooth bug to give a signal: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/371713238?pli=1 https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/371713238?pli=1

teraflop 11mo ago
Given that it's already the most upvoted open Android framework bug, and the Google employee it's assigned to hasn't touched it in almost a year, it seems unlikely that more upvotes will make any difference whatsoever.
- wslh 11mo ago
  I agree, but chance favors the tickets that someone internally champions, and there are plenty of Googlers lurking here.
- paxys 11mo ago
  In such cases it's always better to just open a new identical bug and hope it gets assigned to someone more interested/competent, and no one notices it's a dupe before that.
- ufmace 11mo ago
  Where's the meme of the guy who gets hired on to a tech company, fixes one bug that always annoyed them, then quits immediately
  - zoover2020 11mo ago
    Geohot at Twitter
    - wslh 11mo ago
      A no-nobody: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hotz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hotz
- whatevertrevor 11mo ago

DerekL 11mo ago

Title has a typo, should be “liberated”. Edit: I noticed that the article's page title is also misspelled this way.

bradfitz 11mo ago
I assume it's intentional, playing on "libre" (as in libre software, not just gratis software)
- thaumasiotes 11mo ago
  As just the biggest problem with that idea, the typo doesn't exist on the page. It's in the HN title, and the page's HTML <title> tag.
  - flexagoon 11mo ago
    It does exist on the page. It's in the description of the repository below the repository name.
    - thaumasiotes 11mo ago
      Look again. You're right that the text you're thinking of used to be in that space, if you mean the "About" blurb. But you're not right about the page contents. The "About" is github metadata, just like the partial commit message "android: multidevice capabilites and accessiblit..." that you can also find. And just like that message, it was full of typos because it's not public-facing. But there is an actual page talking about the project, which is what we're all commenting on here, and which never contained the typo.
    - itsnoone 11mo ago
      yup it did- fixed it now. thanks!
I_dream_of_Juma 11mo ago
Funny, I once called out a typo and got ridiculed and downvoted into oblivion. Seems it goes against HN terms of service or something...

aboardRat4 11mo ago

Aren't airpods just bluetooth headphones?

deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
DrewADesign 11mo ago
For just listening to music, yeah. They’ve got other features that aren’t supported elsewhere, though.
- fragmede 11mo ago
  specifically, configuring noise cancelation or transparency mode, as well as multiple different profiles for microphone usage. plus buttons on the airpods themselves. Still baffles me why the first gen airpod "button" wasn't the winner, but unfortunately Steve's no longer with us.
isodev 11mo ago
Apple doesn’t make anything that’s “just <standard protocol>”. Something needs to make it very expensive and feel exclusive… Yes, you can have AirPods with noise cancellation, but you need a 1k€ iPhone to go with that.
- josteink 11mo ago
  Incorrect. AirPods noise cancellation can be controlled by holding the AirPod stalk. And that’s not an excuse or a workaround: That’s how I always do it. I’ve never bothered doing it through software on my iDevices, because that’s much more cumbersome.
  - zoover2020 11mo ago
    The ANC doesn't work on non iOS or macOS/iPadOS devices, though. Holding the stalk won't work

losthubble 11mo ago

How much effort would it take to get this working on Windows?

itsnoone 11mo ago
see MagicPods. although, it's paid, and requires windows to be in test mode to install a driver for L2CAP support. microsoft has decided to not allow l2c for userspace applications.
OsrsNeedsf2P 11mo ago
You might be able to get it working via WSL

Scene_Cast2 11mo ago

Super cool. Also, this is an example of why having an open OS is awesome.

WD-42 11mo ago

Cool project, not cool that it needs to exist. Apple isn’t only content to leech off OSS software, they have to force the existence of more of it to workaround what they closed off.

blackqueeriroh 11mo ago
Uhhhh, Apple donates a ton of code to OSS
- WD-42 11mo ago
  When the license legally compels them to, and sometimes not even then.
  - Razengan 11mo ago
    Look up Swift
    - bloppe 11mo ago
      You mean the language that approximately nobody uses outside XCode, which requires you to register an Apple developer account to function? The same language that only switched to an OSS license after they realized nobody wanted to contribute to a proprietary language? Swift is OSS, but it's not a great example to illustrate your point.
      - raw_anon_1111 11mo ago
        Swift went open source the day it was released. I don’t think Apple needs outside contributors. I think it has enough resources that it would be okay Darwin’s underlying code was BSD license and didn’t require releasing source code.
        bloppe 11mo ago
        "[Swift] was initially a proprietary language, but version 2.2 was made open-source software under the Apache License 2.0 on December 3, 2015" Darwin is also a bad example: "On July 25, 2006, the OpenDarwin team announced that the project was shutting down, as they felt OpenDarwin had "become a mere hosting facility for Mac OS X related projects", and that the efforts to create a standalone Darwin operating system had failed.[40] They also state: "Availability of sources, interaction with Apple representatives, difficulty building and tracking sources, and a lack of interest from the community have all contributed to this."[41]" "PureDarwin is a project to create a bootable operating system image from Apple's released source code for Darwin.[43] Since the halt of OpenDarwin and the release of bootable images since Darwin 8.x, it has been increasingly difficult to create a full operating system as many components became closed source."

toenail 11mo ago

Huh? I've used all my airpods with my linux and android systems.. nothing was liberated.. just more features were added

hollow-moe 11mo ago

Been using it with my airpods 3 anc on a pixel with custom rom (what a curious setup thinking about it). And it's good enough but kinda annoying the airpods don't seem to save my configs and connection isn't really stable. Not complaining since they're not even supposed to be supported tho, thanks for the free stuff ! I wonder if I'd be able to contribute better support with my very limited knowledge of bluetooth analysis...

itsnoone 11mo ago
hey, do you have the 'act as apple device' hook enabled perhaps? that sometimes causes connections to drop. other than that, i believe i refactored the background service to store metadata about the airpods and support various model types recently which can make the app a bit unstable, hence no new release yet- the build is available to download from Actions. if you're facing unstability on the latest (pre)release, v0.2.0-alpha open a issue, i will have a look whenever i get the time. about the configs not being saved- do you mean the conversational awareness, adaptive volume etc.? those should be saved, and sent from airpods every time you connect. so if you change the config from any other device, and connect to your phone then the app should show the new config. you can contirbute by supporting the development, of course! :)

jadar 11mo ago

Super impressive. Looks like the author also reimplemented Apple’s new Liquid Glads UI in Jetpack Compose?

SV_BubbleTime 11mo ago
I don’t know what the other UI options are, but that seems like a step backwards.

Razengan 11mo ago

Huh? I was always able to use AirPods with the Nintendo Switch, for example. Even share them with friends' phones. I didn't know they required "liberating" but good news I suppose. I wish their displays could be liberated though

mannanj 11mo ago

[flagged]

SV_BubbleTime 11mo ago
Go on… you want ionizing emitters near your brain? Unlike others here, I’m keeping an open mind for now, but do not know what you are talking about.
- mannanj 11mo ago
  They're both bad for you.
  - SV_BubbleTime 11mo ago
    You should learn about the relative powers of light, radio, and what natural radio emissions you are exposed to. You know… basic research if you had an opinion on this topic.
    - mannanj 10mo ago
      I learned in my Electrical Engineering degree. You want a basic research task? Take your Wifi router and every phone in your home, and put it right next to your head when you sleep for 7+ nights - report back to me when you're sick of the headaches.
mock-possum 11mo ago
Your psuedoscientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should!
- mannanj 11mo ago
  I see you prefer Straw man and ad hominem over engaging on the merits. No thank you to your toxicity and negativity.

wewewedxfgdf 11mo ago

Tim Apple will not be happy about this.

raw_anon_1111 11mo ago
You’re right. People outside of the Apple ecosystem might by high margin AirPods!!!
- amelius 11mo ago
  Why would they? Apple will simply plug the hole in the next version.
  - raw_anon_1111 11mo ago
    Because Apple likes money. If you want to buy an AirPod, Apple is not going to stop you.

jwr 11mo ago

This is needed even if you are IN the Apple ecosystem. I don't want to upgrade my phone to the latest half-baked iOS version, so Apple purposefully degrades the functionality of my new AirPods 3. Siri won't switch noise cancellation modes, I can't see the battery status, they get relegated to the "generic bluetooth device" section, and even the battery widget will display three identical headphone icons for headphones and the case. How do I know this is done purposefully and not just because AirPods 3 are so new and different from AirPods 2? Well, macOS has been neglected of late, and Apple didn't find the time to break things there, so Airpods 3 work with macOS just as well as Airpods 2 did — switching modes, battery status display, etc. It's very disappointing, and not a great customer experience.

650REDHAIR 11mo ago
I have been slowly moving away from Apple devices and the 15 Pro will likely be my last iPhone. The “it just works” argument keeps falling apart. I’ve already moved over to Linux for my laptop and desktop experience. I only use my iPad to remote into my desktop at this point and use it as my travel laptop. Turns out I don’t really need an iPad.

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 11mo ago

Don't the Beats earbuds have literally the exact the same chipsets and speaker drivers as airpods, but play way nicer with Androids? I know that used to be the case a few years ago at least, but I'm not sure if it's still true.

andrewchambers 11mo ago

Mark Zuckerberg explicitly called out the airpod pairing being closed as unfair in a semi recent interview, maybe he can throw some dollars that way and get it all working nicely in some meta products.

stavros 11mo ago
It's not up to a third party to invest into opening up Apple's purposely locked-down ecosystem.
- mft_ 11mo ago
  …unless someone has sufficient time and/or money to spend on it, and wants to do so as a point of principle. If I had large amounts of spare money, I’d love to seed small endeavours that (according to my personal world view) made the world incrementally better. As has been noted before, what’s the point of having ‘FU money’ if you don’t use it to say ‘FU’ now and again?
  - stavros 11mo ago
    Yeah, but saying "maybe super rich people will do random illogical things" isn't really a great argument. For all we know, Mark Zuckerberg wants to spend his "fuck you" money locking the ecosystem down even more, as a "fuck you" to consumers.
thewebguyd 11mo ago
That's backwards. It's not AirPods being closed that's unfair. Apple should be able to sell first party tech that only works with their own products. What's unfair is Apple locking everyone else out. Not allowing or documenting for third parties to use the same APIs to enable something like automatic device switching in third party bluetooth headphones is the unfair part. Same goes for the watch. That the Apple Watch only works with iPhone isn't the problem. The problem is no other third party is able to make a smartwatch that competes on an level playing field with the Apple Watch on Apple Devices, because Apple locks them out. lock-out is the unfair problem.

rvz 11mo ago

Great project

amelius 11mo ago
I wonder why people keep pouring energy into this bottomless pit of a vendor locker. Surely, Apple will close this hole in the next version. They're a user-hostile company. I stopped bothering with it years ago. Yes, their hardware might be slightly better than the competition, but the difference is not earth-shattering. Certainly not worth all the trouble and uncertainty of what will happen next year when Apple improves their vendor locking. My advice: stop feeding the beast, and start owning your hardware!

ChrisArchitect 11mo ago

A Show HN: thread submitted by the dev earlier in the year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42610644 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42610644

ChrisArchitect 11mo ago

A Show HN: thread submitted by the dev earlier in the year, without traction here, but some background details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42610644 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42610644

hsbauauvhabzb 11mo ago

AirPods are my favourite headphones by a mile. I’d love to get microphone mode working on Linux without the audio sounding terrible. I’d also be curious if anyone can offer insight on why the range is so much better when paired with my iPhone than my computer.

itsnoone 11mo ago
Apple devices uses their own codec, which isn't even supported on macOS, that supports high definition two-way streaming

wodenokoto 11mo ago

I’m trying to connect my airports pro 2 to my old, old 2011 iPod. It’s not going very well. While I haven’t managed to find anything close to an answer using google, chatgpt is quite confident it’s because of Bluetooth versions. Surely Bluetooth 5 is backwards compatible, but then again if the AirPods thinks it’s connected to an iOS device it seems reasonable that it will start using all the proprietary iOS features and then communication breaks down. So to me, liberation of airpods is an on-device issue.

cncjchsue7 11mo ago

There is much better and much cheaper non apple air pods these days.

paulddraper 11mo ago
Precisely this. Lots of superior options. (I say this as someone who has AirPods but didn’t know any better.)
- jaysonelliot 11mo ago
  Which ones do you prefer?
  - Intermernet 11mo ago
    Both the Bose and Sony offerings are, in my opinion, better sound quality and better noise cancellation than AirPods.
halapro 11mo ago
> much better Citation needed
noman-land 11mo ago
Many people are gifted a pair.
Towaway69 11mo ago
A list please Just putting out that statement is kind of “ok and now”?

notsylver 11mo ago

It seems to let you access head tracking data, so now I'm really curious if it would be accurate enough to use with games (eg, microsoft flight sim/arma 3/euro truck simulator 2 head tracking). There is probably a lot of other interesting use cases for it too, but I'm stuck with windows for now so :(

postalcoder 11mo ago
There was a show hn a couple months ago that demonstrated that it could be used for a game. It worked better than I expected. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45362365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45362365
itsnoone 11mo ago
the head gestures is something i couldn't quite figure out, so the gesture logic is completely AI generated. i don't know how to get the actual values from the sensors. but there sure is a use in gaming.

avlbk 11mo ago

This type of project makes me want to click the sponsor repo button on github. Amazing work!

isoprophlex 11mo ago

From a bit further down the page > Bluetooth DID (Device Identification) Hook > Turns out, if you change the manufacturerid to that of Apple, you get access to several special features! I hope Apple gets slammed hard by some regulatory body. Apparently there's absolutely zero magic reasons why their airpods are unable to connect to non-Apple devices; pretend you're an iPhone and you're in. EDIT: read "unable to connect" => "unable to expose advanced functionality", ofc they connect just fine

matwood 11mo ago
> Apparently there's absolutely zero magic reasons why their airpods are unable to connect to non-Apple devices I've had almost all of the versions of AirPods and AirPod Pros and they have connected to non-Apple devices just fine.
- bartvk 11mo ago
  Yup, I've got an old pair connected to my Steam Deck. Works fine.
- realusername 11mo ago
  Personally I've tried the ones of my wife on my Galaxy S23 and I have frequent audio cuts, since it's the only Bluetooth device I've ever experienced that, there's some shenanigans for sure in their firmware.
  - maccard 11mo ago
    I had a slightly older galaxy as my last android phone, and had this problem with the galaxy buds and with the anker ones I got to replace them. My experience with audio on android (Samsung and pixel) was overwhelmingly “this sucks” so I’m more inclined to blame android than apple here
    - realusername 11mo ago
      Personally I never had any audio issues at all apart from pairing (but I also had this issue on iPhone, this is a general case of Bluetooth pairing sucks)

toast0 11mo ago

How does this interact with Apple Find My? Will it mean if my kid travels with their phone (Android) and their AirPods and me/my phone (Android), I won't get a message about being tracked anymore? That would be nice.

DeathArrow 11mo ago

Now I would like to see a software to unlock features for Tesla. You payed for the car, why pay subscriptions?

Synaesthesia 11mo ago
Jailbreak the Tesla. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWQL_XORalY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWQL_XORalY

deleted 11mo ago

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throwaway2037 11mo ago

Hi. I'm not here to troll. This is an amazing project. Why did they select AGPL license over just plain ol' GPL? It seems hard to imagine where the "A" is useful for this software.

timschmidt 11mo ago
Lots of folks see the network provisions of AGPL as kind of like the anti-tivoization clause in GPLv3. I.e. patching flaws / loopholes found in GPLv2. In that sense, AGPLv3 is "the most GPL" that can be GPL'd and so it is attractive to folks who lean in that licensing direction. Never know how code will be put to use in the future.
itsnoone 11mo ago
The developer here- I didn't plan to release an app for android, or even linux. The android app just started out as a personal project. My plan was to make a service for linux that can talk to various headphones, and any UI can talk to the service. And this was supposed to be under AGPL. But, as I graudally reverse-engineered most of the protocol from the bluetooth stack on macOS, I decided to release the app for Android and make one for linux as well. Going to change it to GPL, though. never paid attention to the license in use as I developed.
- throwaway2037 11mo ago
  Thanks for the direct reply. I didn't consider the SaaS angle when I wrote my original post. As a result, your initial license choice makes sense. Also, if you are in control of copyright for all of the source code, then you can easily change the license. I am still blown away by how you did it. It must have been a lot of reverse engineering! Hats off -- keep up the good work.

bloqs 11mo ago

im all for corporate witchhunts, but airpods have been one of the moat universally compatible items Apple has made out of the box?

deleted 11mo ago

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pjmlp 11mo ago

I have been using AirPods with Android phones for several years now.

Luker88 11mo ago

OT, but I am as disappointed in the firwmare of Apple airpods as I am in the one of Pine64 for their pinebuds. The first is not hackable and the second promised much and delivered just an initial dump with dubious sdk license

roman_soldier 11mo ago

A lot of Apple products are designed to best work with other Apple products, that's part of their selling point. Would it not be easier to just buy non Apple headphones if you are not in the Apple eco system?

frodo_torcuato 11mo ago
I guess that’s fair. But it’s also possible that you already own an iPhone + AirPods, and you wanna buy a new non-Apple phone
torben-friis 11mo ago
If it’s vertical integration producing results, that’s all right. If it’s consciously kneecapping the device for all manufacturers except yours, it’s not a practice beneficial to anyone but monopolies, so consumer laws should prevent it. This repo seems to prove the case of AirPods is closer to the latter.
KolibriFly 11mo ago
Yet if someone likes the sound quality, fit, or ANC of AirPods (which are genuinely good), why should they lose out on functionality just because they're not using an iPhone?
- nerbert 11mo ago
  I'm all for everything being compatible with everything, but why should apple invest resources in testing/debugging android compatibility for something that they make?
  - StopDisinfo910 11mo ago
    There is a vast difference between testing and debugging and not intentionally making your product worse when on a standard BT connection which is basically what Apple is doing.
    - 11mo ago

KolibriFly 11mo ago

It's wild how many features Apple locks down purely via software, even though you paid a premium for the hardware

olirex99 11mo ago

Companies are doing some crazy stuff to block other devices. One of the worst things that I have seen is that on MacOS you cannot use the AirPods in a Microsoft Teams call.

KolenCh 11mo ago
I’ve been using AirPods in macOS in Microsoft Teams call all the time.
pta2002 11mo ago
Seconding the other user saying that I also use AirPods Pro (2nd gen) in Teams at least twice a day, on macOS, iOS, and Windows (and had used them on android before, as well). Absolutely no issue whatsoever, and everyone mentions I usually have by far the best audio out of anyone else in the call. What would Apple even gain out of this? They don’t have a competitor to MS Teams, FaceTime is hardly targeting the same segment.
als0 11mo ago
I use them on Teams on macOS (and Windows) every day and is the main reason I have them. What you say is simply not true.
trueno 11mo ago
I’ve used virtually every version of AirPods with Microsoft teams, including AirPod maxes. I use AirPods with teams calls every day. Let’s definitely not pretend like Teams isn’t the crappiest app in the Milky Way. Any user issues can be squarely placed on Microsoft teams with confidence. Actual garbage app.

HellsMaddy 11mo ago

This is awesome on Linux. I've wanted to see my battery status forever, and the ability to pause when you remove an AirPod is really nice too.

darkest_ruby 11mo ago

Require rooted android? That makes it useless for 99% of us

dubeye 11mo ago

I've gifted multiple pairs of AirPods to android users and they all seem to work fine

Synaesthesia 11mo ago

Can someone please figure out how to make my AirPods Pro 2 work with my MacBook Pro M1? Because they just don't work.

Demiurge 11mo ago

This is awesome. I wish we had real EQ on the iOS. Ideally PEQ.

villgax 11mo ago

Apart from being absolutely unusable on any actually used Android phone, very weird that the author didnt bother to have any write up of how they actually did this, not really sure if its a rip off of the CAPods repo, will have to confirm that later

bigstrat2003 11mo ago

Who is buying these that isn't an Apple fanatic? If you aren't a fanboy, then any old pair of earbuds is both cheaper and better than AirPods.

peatmoss 11mo ago

Tunable transparency mode sounds great, and I wish Apple would do something like this as first-party support. As a casual trombone player, who often plays in louder settings, the airpods pro are almost excellent hearing protection. Passive (even "audiophile" or "concert") earplugs make me feel like I'm under water. Airpods Pro attenuate a lot of sound but don't feel so unnatural. Unfortunately, they tend to drop my own sound out of the mix when sounds around me get louder. I'd love a mode that selectively let in more trombone frequencies, or better, that mixed noise cancellation and transparency to give me more of a studio monitor effect. Maybe the airpods could figure out which sounds were mine via the buzzing sounds that propagate through my head from my lips.

itsnoone 11mo ago
apple doesn't allow much customization, only the 9 presets under accessibility>hearing>headphone accomodation. this eq then also applies to the audio played and transparency settings both. maybe one of those nine presets suits your needs?

joeevans1000 11mo ago

I've wanted to try AirPods for my dad as hearing aids, but haven't done so because he would have to have the iPhone on hand. He's too old and blind to operate an iPhone. Can anyone here tell me how to take this awesome repo and make a hearing aid possibility for him with a simpler interface?

itsnoone 11mo ago
setting up hearing aids is a one time thing. then, the main adjustment is the amplification, which can be controlled by swiping on the stem. there is no need for an iphone for using it as hearing aids.

seemaze 11mo ago

What realllly irks me is that Apple did not even make the new AirPods Pro 3 backwards compatible with iOS 18. Features that are available with the AirPods Pro 2 on iOS 18 were not available with the APP3. SAME iOS device, SAME H2 chip, but I was forced to upgrade to (the dumptser fire of a release) iOS 26 to maintain feature parity with the APP2 in an all Apple ecosystem. So f*ing steamed. Still. And Apple support had no clue and kept telling me it should all 'Just Work'.

erickhill 11mo ago

Would be cool to decouple Apple Watches from iPhones, too.

12345hn6789 11mo ago

Requires your phone to be rooted.

semireg 11mo ago

“Do you want to sell AirPods?” No. They want to sell more i-devices so this is just punishment for not fully participating.

bunabhucan 11mo ago

Where did the "libREated" in the title come from?

slater 11mo ago
likely a misspelling of "liberated"?
amatecha 11mo ago
I came here to see what the deal was because I'm surprised this typo is still present a day later XD
clemiclemen 11mo ago
It comes from the GitHub repo description. There is a typo though but this is maybe intentional as the name of the repo is librepods
itsnoone 11mo ago
It was a typo in the GH repo description, fixed it.

ge96 11mo ago

Tangent, sound does take knowledge obv to setup to sound good. I remember flashing the Pine64 Pine Buds and man I could not get them to sound right aside from the original settings. They were not great to begin with but yeah. The UI looks great

jjkaczor 11mo ago

hmmm... so, I have been tempted to investigate Airpods for heading aid use, as the "medical" ones I have now are complete garbage for doing anything on my phone - they regularly forget their bluetooth sync status, they do not have enough volume to watch media on the phone - and when it comes to music, they are laughably horrible. But... in my country, Apple Airpods are not certified as "hearing aids", so that functionality is blocked... Perhaps with this, I will have an Android phone in my future...