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Librepods: AirPods liberated
- theanimeshs 4mo agoamazing project, is the experience as seamless as native Apple devices?
- commandersaki 4mo agoLooking at the comments from the previous thread at least on Android looks like you need to root the device. I'm not sure that is still required.
- SoundlyQuiet 4mo agoIt looks like the issue has been fixed in Android 17 and root is no longer required if you have it.
- g0xA52A2A 4mo agoPrevious discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45941596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45941596
- dang 4mo agoThanks! Macroexpanded: AirPods libreated from Apple's ecosystem - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45941596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45941596 - Nov 2025 (462 comments)
- anonli 4mo ago[dead]
- Mistletoe 4mo agoI’m going to be honest I fell for the AirPods Pro 3 hype about it being the best noise cancelling of all time and I bought a pair. I found the noise cancelling worse than my $30 Anker Soundcore P30i, I could never get the hearing test on the AirPods to pass no matter what depths of a quiet room I went to, and the sound quality on music was worse than my Ankers. Don’t fall for the hype or at least order from Amazon like I did so you can return them. I could hear my AC running with the AirPods, with the Anker I had to ask my girlfriend if it was on.
- micromacrofoot 4mo agodid you try different tips? I have heard this makes a big difference for some
- _kulang 4mo agoSounds like you either had a fake or more likely, couldn’t fit them properly
- smokey5000 4mo ago"you're holding it wrong"
- asimovDev 4mo agoin-ear monitors rely on you having a good seal in the ear to sound good. I wouldn't be surprised if ANC works worse if the tips didn't seal well
- jonhohle 4mo agoI’m glad the Anker’s worked out for you, but the Soundcore brand almost completely turned me off from Anker. After two weeks the Soundcore buds I had stopped charging. I have limited experience with noise canceling headphones (some circa 2008 active Sony earbuds, and some not-that-great Beats Studio Buds+. On a whim I bought AirPods 4 ANC and I’ve found them way better than I expected. Good enough for airplane noise canceling without the seal of most ear buds. They feel smaller than the beats buds, even with the stem. They seamlessly switch from my phone to iPad to Mac. I haven’t sat down to compare their quality to any of my other headphones, but I don’t really care. Nothing comes close to matching the convenience and the sound isn’t so bad that I each for something else. I did not expect to like them as much as I do. Maybe it’s hype, maybe I don’t know what better noise canceling sounds like. These aren’t the Pros, so maybe there’s a difference.
- floydnoel 4mo agoI had the original AirPods Pro and they were really great until Apple nerfed them. Apparently the noise cancelling was too strong in some cases so they worsened everybody's. After that they started making ear-piercing squelching noises, rendering them useless. I guess they make a good paperweight and reminder to never buy noise-cancelling products from Apple.
- drnick1 4mo agoIt would be useful to explain to people who don't currently own AirPods and don't really follow Apple stuff much what features are lost when AirPods are paired with a non-Apple device.
- JrProgrammer 4mo agoThere is a feature compatibility list…
- VladVladikoff 4mo agoAirPods themselves aren’t really that great from an audiophile perspective. The only part I like about them is the integration with the Apple ecosystem. This is a fun project and cudos to whoever pulled it off, but I fail to see the motivation.
- dhosek 4mo agoMy thoughts exactly, what I’d rather have is the ability to integrate other stuff into Apple’s ecosystem (most notably my hearing aids, which despite being MFi can only really stream audio from my phone—I had a pair of Beats headphones a few years ago and the ease with which I could switch them between phone, iPad and Mac was so wonderful and I’d like to be able to do that with my HAs as well.
- emdash 4mo agoI actually really like the airpod pros from an audio standpoint. I find that a lot of wireless earbuds are way too heavy on the bass compared to the airpod pro.
- basilikum 4mo agoAirpods may not be "great from an audiophile perspective", but their sound is decent and they are actually well designed headphones. They are remarkably unremarkable. They have good (the new Pros even great) ANC. Their controls are intuitive and well thought out. It's hard for me to believe that I'm promoting an Apple product here, but they are what people often claim other Apple products to be – which I found to be BS for these other products. Someone sensible actually put thought into the product.
- xrd 4mo agoI'm not an apple person so this surprised me. I guess I have fallen for the "apple gear is expensive and must be the best" fallacy. What are good options for similar wireless bud headphones?
- phil21 4mo agoThe sony earbuds are about the best I’ve had for sound quality and noise cancellation. Much better than AirPods, but not nearly as nice integration with the Apple ecosystem. I find AirPods Pro 2 to be “good enough” where I gave away my set of XMs to someone who will actually use them. Call (mic) quality in AirPods is better as well, if that matters at all to you. At least that’s what folks on the remote end of calls told me.
- jamwise 4mo agoIf I wasn't certain Apple will do their best to patch every avenue to this working in the future it might be motivation to buy AirPods.
- giancarlostoro 4mo agoI would be surprised if they could. Linux on Macs is still a thing. In fact, Linux on Mac is why I keep all the Macs we have in the house from the mid to late 2000s because they still turn on and work, if I choose to install Linux on any of them they are still usable.
- matheusmoreira 4mo ago> I would be surprised if they could. They can. Require a valid signature from the mac's secure cryptoprocessor in order to interoperate. There's nothing we can do. Remember when we used to use cryptography to protect ourselves from government and corporation espionage? Good times. Now cryptography is used by governments and corporations to protect themselves from us. One day we'll need such hardware attestations to even get an internet connection.
- robotresearcher 4mo ago> Now cryptography is used by governments and corporations to protect themselves from us. Just in case you're not kidding, I'll remind you it was always thus. The Nazi Enigma machines were not created by libertarian anarcho-punks to distribute The Whole Earth Catalog.
- matheusmoreira 4mo agoI was referencing the time period that saw the invention of the personal computer which democratized access to strong cryptography, leading to the crypto wars as the US government attempted to restrict civilian use.
- code_duck 4mo ago
- jackhalford 4mo ago> The aacp.rs and the att.rs files were translated from Kotlin to Rust with AI. Some parts of the media_controller.rs file, mainly the pulse integration, was also AI-generated. The future is now.
- userbinator 4mo agoNot surprised at all; AI has dramatically lowered the bar to people wanting to create software they wouldn't otherwise have the time nor motivation to. Quality remains to be seen but IMHO it can only get better.
- teravor 4mo agothat's nothing. you can grab a proprietary binary, open it up in IDA Pro (with MCP), spend some 10 minutes crafting a good prompt and after a few million (mainly input/cached) GLM 5.2 tokens you have a python script fluently speaking the proprietary protocol.
- FrinkleFrankle 4mo agoSounds cool. Do you have a link or more info to share?
- teravor 4mo agoaside from https://github.com/mrexodia/ida-pro-mcp https://github.com/mrexodia/ida-pro-mcp (which isn't mine) i have nothing i can publicly share. it's amusing how glm 5.2 jailbreaks itself, you ask it to quite literally break someone's software and it talks itself into it being a capture the flag competition.
- jitl 4mo agoI uploaded two binary save files from a game on my Steam Deck to ChatGPT, it diffed them and spat out a script to edit various values. The bots are really good at this sort of thing.
- 4mo ago
- qsxfthnkp2322 4mo agoI miss good wired earbuds.
- frail_figure 4mo agoWired earbuds were great until they got caught on some piece of clothing and got ripped out.
- kristofferR 4mo agoNot to mention the microphonics
- RulerOf 4mo agoWhat do you mean? I ask because I find Apple's wired EarPods to be less... selective than AirPods are—by that I mean they'll pick up more background noise whereas AirPods seem to only transmit my voice—but EarPods' clarity exceeds AirPods if you grab the mic and hold it next to your mouth, which you obviously can't do with AirPods.
- kristofferR 4mo agoMicrophonics = cable noise, like when the cable drags against your zipper.
- ShinyLeftPad 4mo agoIf you spend half the price of Airpods on good wired IEMs cable noise is barely a thing...
- freedomben 4mo agoFor real, after being on wireless earbuds for quite some time and going back to wired, it is absolutely incredible how many things the cords get caught on. Even just your own hands!
- 4mo ago
- daft_pink 4mo agoI feel the main useful feature that I’m looking for is the ability to use the unlimited multipoint on other devices. The 2 points that most other devices gives you is terrible. It would be nice to be able to quickly connect to my voip deskphone at work from time to time.
- Aurornis 4mo agoTo clarify because this is confusing: The AirPods work as regular old BlueTooth earbuds on other devices already. This is an implementation of some of the extra features and interfaces that are integrated into Apple products.
- KomoD 4mo agoHow is it confusing? The top of the README explains it. > LibrePods allows you to use AirPods features that are exclusive to Apple devices. It implements the proprietary protocol used to exchange data between AirPods and Apple devices And then has a table listing the features.
- Springtime 4mo agoI wasn't aware they operated as baseline Bluetooth headphones by default on other devices, so even having read the readme it wasn't obvious.
- hack1312 4mo agoHow else did you think they worked
- Springtime 4mo agoI assumed, like Apple's Airtags (which use Bluetooth LE), that they used some proprietary pairing that's incompatible with non-Apple devices.
- culi 4mo agoAirtags can be scanned with your non-Apple smartphone's NFC reader which gives you contact info for the owner. Beyond that, all tracker devices are proprietary. The Tile/Chipolo network only works with Tile/Chipolo; Samsung's SmartTag only works with the SmartThings app which is exclusive to Samsung phones; etc. I just don't think the comparison is apt
- vlod 4mo agoI respect the work/hack involved. However why support a company (by buying airpods) that is this hostile. i.e. I wouldn't be surprised to see a patch to stop this.
- Gigachad 4mo agoIt's less hostile and more lazy. The Airpods use standard bluetooth for everything that bluetooth has. The stuff that doesn't work on non apple platforms is the configuration, changing what the squeeze actions do and loading firmware updates. There is no way to do this with standard bluetooth, you have to have a custom app for it. Apple just didn't build a custom app for other platforms but there is no reason they would care about someone else investing the resources in to building it. They still win because you bought the airpods and someone else spent the resources on making the app.
- ruszki 4mo agoThe fact that simple VendorID spoofing makes features available tells otherwise.
- DANmode 4mo ago0. For the love of the game 1. Additional freedom for used purchasers, gifted purchasers, purchasers from a past era, whatever
- HerbManic 4mo agoThis is my big conundrum with Apple. Their hardware is absolutely brilliant, but their combative nature against the users freedom on their hardware means I will never use it. Even if you can hack around it, it is the culture that treats the users as someone to be controlled and coddled that bothers me.
- dainank 4mo agoOut of curiosity, what makes their hardware 'brilliant'? I often hear this but never actually looked into why. What is your take on that?
- OsrsNeedsf2P 4mo agoDang, was hoping this would let me use Airpods as both speaker and headset at the same time on Linux
- DANmode 4mo agoYou can use your AirPods as both a speaker (playback) and a headset (microphone) at the same time on Linux, but you must switch the Bluetooth profile to HFP (Hands-Free Profile) or HSP (Headset Profile). Note that this is the default for better quality (Bluetooth spec, not Linux).
- cl3misch 4mo ago> Note that this is the default for better quality (Bluetooth spec, not Linux). Yeah, I have the impression most people assume Apple magically solved sound/mic quality in bidirectional mode. Or they just don't care. In any case, I'm unhappy about how much Airpods are used for meetings. They sounds so much worse than any wired mic! Or your laptop's mic, as long as you're not using the speakers.
- ornornor 4mo agoI kinda assumed apple had a magic sauce way to have higher sound quality on the iPhone rather than using the BT spec HFP, isn’t that the case?
- cl3misch 4mo agoThey use hardware tricks (beamshaping) and software tricks (audio processing) to get as much out of them as possible, and they do sound better than generic cheap Bluetooth earbuds, but the Bluetooth connection is still the bottleneck. They did announce a special "high quality recording mode" for Airpods in iOS 26 (which I didn't know, so thanks) but I couldn't find much except their developer announcement. It's not documented and I don't have the feeling it's being used.
- atanasi 4mo ago
- ctippett 4mo agoI've owned several pairs of AirPods over the years and this is the first I'm learning about some of their features. I almost found myself wanting there to be a third column for indicating Apple support (of course I'm being facetious).
- tclancy 4mo agoYes, I recently upgraded to the Pro 3 and it’s a sign of how old I am getting: I disabled a lot of the defaults (the head gestures to control music playback were awful when doing any serious yard work) promising myself I would investigate all the features in time. A few months later, I have a rough idea of how to play, pause and adjust volume with the weird (to me) stalk massaging.
- himata4113 4mo agoRelated: https://github.com/can1357/kAirPods https://github.com/can1357/kAirPods
- 12345hn6789 4mo agoFYI android 17 fixes the bugs in the Bluetooth stack that previously required root to fix. But, this app still charges $5 for using features your air pods have. I'll be spending my afternoon forking and enabling them.
- Spill4288 4mo agoI get the idea behind wanting to fork and improve it, I truely do. I also get the idea behind wanting to see how the innards work. However I'm a developer and I gladly paid the $5 so I can support the original dev for all the work that they have already done, and also for open sourcing it. I really don't want to maintain my own fork, sync it, build apks etc
- itsnoone 4mo agoHi! The developer here. The app requires a purchase only when you install it from Play Store. The FOSS version available on GitHub takes you to my GH Sponsors page where you can wait for a few seconds and return back to the app. Or you can also just click the Restore Purchases button. There's no need for a fork :)
- dewey 4mo agoThat’s why selling anything to developers is no fun, they don’t know how to value their time.
- microgpt 4mo ago[dead]
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- taimurshasan 4mo agoThis project is great. Hopefully one day AirDrop is liberated too. https://github.com/seemoo-lab/opendrop https://github.com/seemoo-lab/opendrop looked promising, but it seems stale. maybe one day.
- mapontosevenths 4mo agoThis was solved a little while ago. https://www.android.com/quick-share/ https://www.android.com/quick-share/
- tentacleuno 4mo agoIs that implementation open-source? I'm sure it's bundled as part of Google Play, not AOSP.
- mapontosevenths 4mo agoLooks like you're right. They built it in rust and embedded it in Google Play services. Booo. https://blog.google/security/android-quick-share-support-for-airdrop-security/ https://blog.google/security/android-quick-share-support-for...
- forsalebypwner 4mo agoFor a very limited subset of Android devices https://support.google.com/android/answer/9286773#zippy=%2Cfor-devices-without-quick-share-support-for-airdrop%2Cfor-devices-with-quick-share-support-for-airdrop:~:text=For%20devices%20with,click%20Accept https://support.google.com/android/answer/9286773#zippy=%2Cf....
- mrguyorama 4mo agoThe only limit I see there is Android OS 6+. That's not exactly a significant limit.
- forsalebypwner 4mo ago
- VaporJournalAPP 4mo ago[flagged]
- grougnax 4mo ago[dead]
- WhyNotHugo 4mo agoI'm really curious why some features are tagged "Will not be implemented" for Linux, but "Planned" for Android.
- functionmouse 4mo agobecause android has users
- itsnoone 4mo agoThe dev here- there are exactly 2 features- Head Gestures and heart rate monitoring. Both have no use on Linux. On Android head gestures is to answer calls and heart rate will be provided to Health Platform. edit: there's just one that's not planned for Linux and planned for Andorid- HRM. Head gestures is already implemented on Android.
- Kirby64 4mo agoIs there a reason head gestures couldn't be mapped to functions in Linux? I see little reason why you couldn't have it used to play/pause or something. Heart rate monitoring less-so... but even that exposure could be useful for something if given the right API.
- Nemi 4mo agoSo beware, i setup my APP3 on my daughters ipad and had hearing aids set with a hearing test. This way when connecting to my Pixel it would still apply the hearing aid adjustments, but I would not have other things like auto-pause when removing the airpod. Well, I installed this and now my hearing settings have been removed from the airpods. And I guess you could say that this would be obvious because librepods doesn't support the hearing aids, what is not obvious is that installing it takes a set of APP3 that has been already setup and basically wipes them. Good to know for the future
- jking55 4mo ago[flagged]