As much as I will never forgive Apple for killing the headphone jack on phones, I love my AirPods. The AirPods Pro 2 are the best pair of wireless earbuds I have ever owned. From the balanced audio quality to long battery life to seamless connectivity to exceptional noise cancellation, AirPods get everything right.
However, there was one missing feature holding AirPods back. Unlike most earbuds that give you a way to tune your own sound profile, with AirPods, you get what you get. So, if you love the bass to be a bit too heavy, you were in luck.
That changes today. At the WWDC 2026 event, Apple announced that AirPods are finally getting a custom EQ setting, allowing users to tune their listening experience.
How does the new AirPods EQ work?
Once you dive into the Equalizer settings, you get two options: Recommended and Custom. The Recommended profile is the default tuning Apple has always used, designed to faithfully represent your music the way the creators intended.
But if you want to take control, you can simply choose the Custom option and adjust the EQ to your heart’s content. You can tweak the Low, Mid, and High frequencies and tune the sound to match your taste.
There’s even a live waveform and a sample track playing, so you can hear the changes in real time as you make them. And if you go overboard and mess things up, there’s a handy Reset button to take you back to square one.
It’s a small addition, but one that AirPods users have wanted for a long time. Better late than never, I say.
When can you get the new EQ feature?
The custom EQ setting will arrive with the iOS 27 update. So, you will have to wait a bit before you can start fiddling with your AirPods’ sound profile. If you cannot wait, the developer beta will launch today, but it will be full of bugs, so install it at your own risk.
