Mastering Your AirPods-- Tips and Tricks

Mastering

your

AirPods, today at Dotto Tech. This is Steve Dotto. How the hell are you doing this good day? At Dotto Tech, we make technology easy so you can do more. More than? Well, one thing I wouldn't recommend you do anymore is wander around with

your

nose in your phone, texting. You are a danger to yourself and to others. Get your nose out of your phone, stop texting. Here's a suggestion, maybe you should consider and they said on headphones and just listen to a podcast, listen to some music while walking around and keep your eyes on the environment around you.

Let's talk about Apple AirPods today. Alright. I've never really demoed headphones before, so this is something unique to me. When I first got it, first of all, the case is a marvel of industrial design. It's something you just want to get your hands on. And your first impression when you buy AirPods, when you first pair it with your phone, you'll be delighted because you see what happens. I have my phone shot here. When you open the case and you have Bluetooth enabled on your phone, when you open the case near a phone, it automatically identifies and connects between the AirPods and the phone.

Now when it hasn't connected, like mine already has, when it hasn't paired, it will actually say, "Do you want to pair with this device?" And you can go through the pairing process at that point there. But just the action of opening the lid of your case allows that to happen. It's a really cool thing to happen. Now, anytime after, once they're connected, when you open it, it gives you information about the battery charge on both your AirPods and their case. As you can see my cases are at 52% and my AirPods are at 100%. The case doubles as a charging case, of course, when you're traveling with it. he.

Now, another way to check the battery level of your AirPods is to simply swipe right then scroll down, and you'll get battery information on all your different Bluetooth-connected devices. There's my watch at 25%, and my AirPods, et cetera, and my case itself. Now while I'm talking about the clock, I'm going to lightly touch the clock. I'm not doing a lot of this on the watch because the watch on AirPod integration, Apple touts it and it's pretty cool, but it's not my cup of tea, and here's why. It's pretty easy for you to download some songs on your Apple Watch and then control...

And then you could say, go for a run with just your watch and AirPods. That works well, and people are doing it. I don't do that because I don't listen to music and I don't run. When I go for a walk, I listen to podcasts. It's really frustrating because I haven't found an easy way to upload my podcasts to my smartphone and then just walk around with my AirPods and my phone, and that was one of the things I was hoping for. That's the biggest disappointment I've had with the AirPods: the fact that I can't load my podcasts.

I hope it comes in a next version. I really want that ability. Well right now. I want to talk a little bit about controlling your AirPods. They don't have much control. For example, one of the things that the AirPods don't have is that they don't have the ability to control the volume as you say, on the tethered headphones, which is a really nice feature. But you know the buttons you have on the tethered earbud, we can replace some of those buttons on the AirPods, and we do that by double tapping on one ear or the other.

It sounds like you're being a bit self-abusive, because you actually have to tap the AirPod to your ear to invoke commands. There are a limited number of commands you can call, but let me show you exactly what they are. Let's go in and go to the Bluetooth settings, and when the AirPods are connected, you can go in and set what the double tap does on each ear, left or right. And? There are four commands you can call, and you can play them in either ear. You can configure it according to your preferences. You can summon Siri, which is really helpful.

You can play or pause, whatever you're listening to, which is what I use the most. While I'm walking listening to a podcast, which is what I usually do when I'm walking, if someone talks to me or I want to stop listening for a moment, I double tap and pause the podcast, and double tap and it starts playing again. You can also skip to the next or previous track. You did get some basic navigation, but as I say, there are no volume settings, it's really quite limited in what you can do. But that is the nature of something that is a simple and clean device.

Now also, if we take a look here, it has something called automatic ear detection, and what it does is, if you take off a headset, it will pause whatever you're playing, and it will know when you put it on. It's location-aware, location-wise, if you're in the place you're supposed to listen to, it knows when you're there, and then it will automatically transfer any audio signal from your phone to the AirPods. That tends to work probably about 95% of the time. Occasionally it doesn't, and you have to do things manually, but for the most part it works. It works very well.

Now, there is another convenience factor that Apple has incorporated. If you think about the nature of wanting to keep your phone in your bag or pocket, and not having it, but having all the benefits of the phone by having the completely wireless earphones, the only thing we lose is caller ID. I don't know about you, but I review all the calls I receive. I want to take a look and see if I want to talk to the person. Now if my phone is in my pocket it defeats the purpose of caller id, if I can't see who is calling and I have to dig out the phone which defeats the purpose of these wonderful wireless headphones.

They've got that covered for us though, and it's pretty nifty. If you go down to your phone settings, so you have to scroll down in your settings to call the phone, there you can choose a feature called announced calls. You see it? Yes. You can choose to have caller ID announced audibly through your headset using this setting. You can choose to only have it on your headphones, headphones in the car, which is another time you may want that, or never. If you set it up, there is a caveat: it will only work if the caller's number is in your address book.

If it's an unknown caller, it will just say, unknown caller, so you won't know who it is, but that would be the case anyway, if you're looking at your caller ID. Whatever appears on the caller ID screen will be audibly announced in your ear, which is great. Now here is an additional unique or very valuable asset. If you lose your AirPods... If you lose them, it's easy to lose them. But if you just misplaced them somewhere in your house, you can use the Find My iPhone feature that is built into iOS to find your AirPods. First, it will physically tell you where they are nearby, and then you'll see what you can do.

If you click on them themselves, you can ask them to play a sound. Now, it's not very loud, but it's going to start here, in a moment here. I'll let you hear it, but it's not really loud, but it's loud enough that if they're under a cushion, or in your bag, or in your pocket and you can't see them, maybe you can hear them. the sound emanating from these speakers to help you find said AirPods. Because at the end of the day, you don't want to lose these things. They are very expensive. I'm actually kind of proud of myself because one of the biggest things I was worried about when I bought them was that I'd lose them.

So let's see, is he going to play? There is. It is a small buggy. Please let's go. There is. You hear it? It sounds like a little cricket chirping, sadly. Oh, there she is, singing. Now is that going to be high enough for you to find? In fact, it's getting a little stronger. It's not that bad. Oh, when the lid is closed, it's pretty quiet, but when the lid is open, it's pretty cool. If you just drop one somewhere that should help you find it, and you could actually choose to mute one side or the other, if it says, I have one, but you want to mute one, then you can play it on the other one.

I can turn off for now. Okay, stop playing, stop. Here we go. For. So good. There is. We've got AirPods in Find My iPhone, just a handy little extra for you. Now I have to admit that I really like my AirPods. I find these to be a very convenient and elegant implementation, and the industrial design that goes into the case and how it interfaces with the mobile system's operating system is a beauty. As for the geek in me, he's more than impressed with Apple's implementation of the AirPods. And since these are over $200 in Canada, I've kept them safe.

I'll actually drop a Lincoln, you can actually disguise your case to look like a Tic Tac case, or to look like a breath mint case, to discourage people from stealing it, I guess, if it's sitting on the your car seat or something like that, because you want to protect them the best you can. Of course, things like finding my AirPods in Find My iPhone help in that regard. But as much as I love these, these are amazing headphones for at home, for around the house, for walking, for my normal everyday life around the house and city life.

These are not great travel headphones. They are not good airplane headphones. Because? Because they are too quiet. When I got on a plane, and even when the plane is a quiet plane and you're sailing at altitude, the cabin noise is too loud to wear them comfortably. I find these to be too quiet. I have a favorite pair of headphones for that particular purpose, and they're also a pretty expensive pair of headphones, but they do a lot of other things. These are the Bose noise canceling headphones I own. I'll put a link to these below, too. These are a completely different animal.

They're hardwired, they plug in, they've got a little bit of battery life, and they've got a power system here that really cancels the noise out of whatever environment you're in. What it does is cancel out bass and lingering noise, like it's perfect for use on a plane or if you're in transit. It doesn't cut out people talking to you or choppy type noise, so you still hear someone talking to you. But you can see, it's very molded. They have a whole host of different earpieces that fit and fit very well in your ear. And when you turn on noise cancellation, it does a wonderful job of canceling out all the noise around you.

I love these, especially on long flights. I sleep with them inside, I listen to music. I use them all the time, but they are headphones that I tend to use when I travel. When I'm at home, the comfort of Apple AirPods takes me through the day. I am well equipped in terms of headphones. I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to my headphones I guess. I hope you found today's video helpful, and if so, please subscribe to this channel and be sure to hit that notification bell. And any feedback you have, put it in the comments here on YouTube.

I promise, I read each and every comment, so I look forward to reading suggestions for upcoming videos or your thoughts on the best headphones for you. Until next time, I'm Steve Dotto. Have fun attacking the castle.