How to Pause AirPods in 3 ways

In your daily day to day activities, you probably must have your AirPods switched on, playing some relaxing music in your ears, or you might even be listening to the news while doing either some work or simply having a walk in the park, but what do you do when someone comes up to you and starts asking you something?

It might be awkward when you cannot stop your AirPods sound playback while the other person has to scream at you to hear them. Wouldn’t it be better to have an easy way to pause AirPods?

This article will deal with how to pause AirPods in 3 ways.

How to Disable Automatic Ear Detection for AirPods

The Automatic Ear Detection is a feature of the AirPods in which audio is switched to your AirPods the moment you put them in your ears; on the contrary, pulling even one of them out will result in the audio playback switching to the speaker of your phone.

While this feature can be nifty for some people, it can be unpleasant for others due to the sensor or their preference for listening to audio playback through a single AirPod.

Therefore, disabling this feature can benefit specifically those who either like to work while listening to audio using a single AirPod or when they don’t want the audio to instantly switch to a phone speaker the moment both AirPods are removed from the ears.

To disable Automatic Ear Detection, do the following:

Open the AirPods charging case with both the AirPods inside
On any of your IOS devices, go to the settings and the ‘Bluetooth.’
Look for your device under the ‘My Devices’ section
Tap the ‘i’ symbol next to your AirPods device’s name
Press the ‘Automatic Ear Detection’ green slider bar to disable the feature

And with this, you can safely listen to a single AirPod without worrying about the audio playback switching to your phone’s speaker and causing a potentially embarrassing situation.

Pause by Double-Tapping on AirPods

Suppose you are the type to not simply disable your AirPods audio playback by putting them into their charging case or are often stuck in a situation where you can’t waste time pulling out your charging case. In that case, you can always pause the audio playback of your AirPods by double-tapping them.

To enable this feature to know how to pause AirPods, follow the given steps:

Open your AirPods charging case with both the AirPods inside
On your preferred IOS device, go to Settings > Bluetooth
Search for your AirPods Device under ‘My Devices’ and click on the ‘i’ symbol next to it
Under the Double-tap on AirPods button, select either the left or proper settings to set what kind of actions they will perform when either AirPods are double-tapped; some options may include:

- Siri
- Play/Pause
- Next Track
- Previous Track
- Off

Do remember that Apple technically created the ‘Next Track’ and ‘Previous Track’ options after releasing iOS 11. If your iOS device is old or has an old version of iOS, the options for double-tap will be Play, Pause, and Off settings along with Siri.

Tell Siri to Pause AirPods Audio

While you may now know how to pause AirPods by double-tapping, there is another to pause their audio playback.

AirPods such as AirPods (1^st gen) and the second AirPods (2^nd gen) have the Siri feature integrated.

Although how you access Siri can slightly depend on what kind of AirPods version you have, If you have AirPods 1^st gen, then you can customize the left and suitable options on your device to access Siri using double tap.

Once the assistant has been summoned, you can tell it whatever you want, such as pausing an audio playback or skipping a track.

For AirPods 2^nd gen, say “Hey, Siri”; this will summon the assistant. Once the assistant has been successfully called upon, tell it whatever you want, such as pausing an audio playback or skipping an audio track.

This is an effective way of knowing how to pause AirPods, as this one involves speaking to the integrated assistant of your AirPods.