AirPods Pro 2 have been the best earbuds I've ever owned in my entire life and it's not even close. From a noticeable boost in sound quality compared to the first generation and fantastic features like Conversation Boost and Adaptive Audio, they've been an essential part of my life for the last year and a half they've been on the market.
Now, Apple is making them even more capable with the features it is rolling out with iOS 18, and — if you're a developer — you can already get in on these features. The company has released a new firmware beta through build number 7A5244b that brings some of the key features coming to AirPods Pro 2 to the headphones months before they'll be made available to the public when Apple rolls out iOS 18 to everyone this fall.
This is the second beta firmware update that the company has rolled out since Apple originally announced the new features coming to AirPods Pro 2 back at WWDC 2024 in June.
What features are available in the new firmware beta?
The first feature now available on AirPods Pro 2 through the new firmware update is Siri Interactions, the new feature that lets you shake or nod your head to interact with Siri announcements while you're wearing your earbuds. As Apple explains, "Siri Interactions allow users to answer or dismiss calls, interact with messages, manage notifications, and so much more — all without speaking."
The firmware update also brings with it Voice Isolation which Apple is bringing directly to the earbuds after originally launching the feature on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. The company says "machine learning, running on the H2 chip in AirPods Pro and the paired iPhone, iPad, or Mac, isolates and enhances voice quality while removing significant background noise — like wind around the caller — for the listener."
The last feature available now through the firmware update is Personalized Spatial Audio with dynamic head tracking for games. While that is also coming to the AirPods 3 and AirPods Max, the company is reserving "improved voice quality, including 16-bit, 48kHz audio" for games with AirPods Pro 2.
All of these features are available for developers now as long as they also have an iPhone running the iOS 18 developer beta.
