AirPods fix for macOS

AirPods sound quality fixer and battery life enhancer for macOS.
Usage »
Explanation · Report Bug · Request Feature

Contents

• Contents
• Usage
  • Setup keyboard shortcut using Automator
• Explanation
• References

Usage

Setup keyboard shortcut using Automator

Description: Setup a keyboard shortcut to change the sound input device to the built-in microphone using Automator.

Show instructions

1. Open Automator.
2. Make a Quick Action.
3. Make sure it receives no input at all programs.
4. Select Run Apple Script and paste the contents from airpods.applescript.
5. Save the Quick Action.
6. Open System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts and select Services from the sidebar and find your under the General section.
7. Add a shortcut by double clicking (none).

Explanation

When the microphone on the AirPods is enabled, the Bluetooth protocol and the compression protocol is changed from A2DP to HSP, downgrading the audio format from 48 kHz to 16 kHz.

Using Audio MIDI Setup you can this yourself. When the MacBook Pro Microphone is selected as the input device, the AirPods will output at 48,0 kHz:

When the AirPods itself are selected as the input device, they will only output at 16,0 kHz:

References

For references and further information about the Airpods issue see:

• Apple Community: AirPods stuck on 16kHz/ SCO codec
• Jeff Geerling’s blog post: AirPods get stuck in low-quality 16 kHz audio mode when starting a VM
• Reddit r/airpods: AirPods low quality issue

For a collection of AppleScript snippets, applets, resources and links, see: roaldnefs/applescript.