by isoprophlex
15 subcomments
- From a bit further down the page
> Bluetooth DID (Device Identification) Hook
> Turns out, if you change the manufacturerid to that of Apple, you get access to several special features!
I hope Apple gets slammed hard by some regulatory body. Apparently there's absolutely zero magic reasons why their airpods are unable to connect to non-Apple devices; pretend you're an iPhone and you're in.
EDIT: read "unable to connect" => "unable to expose advanced functionality", ofc they connect just fine
- A cool project, when you want to use AirPods outside of Apples ecosystem. Sadly, you have to use a rooted android device with a small patch due to a bug in the Android Bluetooth implementation.
https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/371713238
- What realllly irks me is that Apple did not even make the new AirPods Pro 3 backwards compatible with iOS 18. Features that are available with the AirPods Pro 2 on iOS 18 were not available with the APP3. SAME iOS device, SAME H2 chip, but I was forced to upgrade to (the dumptser fire of a release) iOS 26 to maintain feature parity with the APP2 in an all Apple ecosystem.
So f*ing steamed. Still. And Apple support had no clue and kept telling me it should all 'Just Work'.
by andrewchambers
2 subcomments
- Mark Zuckerberg explicitly called out the airpod pairing being closed as unfair in a semi recent interview, maybe he can throw some dollars that way and get it all working nicely in some meta products.
- Cool project, not cool that it needs to exist. Apple isn’t only content to leech off OSS software, they have to force the existence of more of it to workaround what they closed off.
- hmmm... so, I have been tempted to investigate Airpods for heading aid use, as the "medical" ones I have now are complete garbage for doing anything on my phone - they regularly forget their bluetooth sync status, they do not have enough volume to watch media on the phone - and when it comes to music, they are laughably horrible.
But... in my country, Apple Airpods are not certified as "hearing aids", so that functionality is blocked... Perhaps with this, I will have an Android phone in my future...
by rrrrrrrrrrrryan
0 subcomment
- Don't the Beats earbuds have literally the exact the same chipsets and speaker drivers as airpods, but play way nicer with Androids?
I know that used to be the case a few years ago at least, but I'm not sure if it's still true.
- Excellent project, don't forget to upvote the Android bluetooth bug to give a signal: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/371713238?pli=1
by Scene_Cast2
0 subcomment
- Super cool. Also, this is an example of why having an open OS is awesome.
by hollow-moe
1 subcomments
- Been using it with my airpods 3 anc on a pixel with custom rom (what a curious setup thinking about it). And it's good enough but kinda annoying the airpods don't seem to save my configs and connection isn't really stable. Not complaining since they're not even supposed to be supported tho, thanks for the free stuff ! I wonder if I'd be able to contribute better support with my very limited knowledge of bluetooth analysis...
by ChrisArchitect
0 subcomment
- A Show HN: thread submitted by the dev earlier in the year, without traction here, but some background details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42610644
- Tunable transparency mode sounds great, and I wish Apple would do something like this as first-party support.
As a casual trombone player, who often plays in louder settings, the airpods pro are almost excellent hearing protection. Passive (even "audiophile" or "concert") earplugs make me feel like I'm under water. Airpods Pro attenuate a lot of sound but don't feel so unnatural.
Unfortunately, they tend to drop my own sound out of the mix when sounds around me get louder.
I'd love a mode that selectively let in more trombone frequencies, or better, that mixed noise cancellation and transparency to give me more of a studio monitor effect. Maybe the airpods could figure out which sounds were mine via the buzzing sounds that propagate through my head from my lips.
by HellsMaddy
0 subcomment
- This is awesome on Linux. I've wanted to see my battery status forever, and the ability to pause when you remove an AirPod is really nice too.
- This type of project makes me want to click the sponsor repo button on github. Amazing work!
by KolibriFly
0 subcomment
- It's wild how many features Apple locks down purely via software, even though you paid a premium for the hardware
- This excellent.. there needs to be a macos version as well. Using Mavericks I was unable to adjust any settings on my airpods pro 2
- Title has a typo, should be “liberated”.
Edit: I noticed that the article's page title is also misspelled this way.
by joeevans1000
1 subcomments
- I've wanted to try AirPods for my dad as hearing aids, but haven't done so because he would have to have the iPhone on hand. He's too old and blind to operate an iPhone. Can anyone here tell me how to take this awesome repo and make a hearing aid possibility for him with a simpler interface?
by aboardRat4
3 subcomments
- Aren't airpods just bluetooth headphones?
by losthubble
2 subcomments
- How much effort would it take to get this working on Windows?
- This is needed even if you are IN the Apple ecosystem. I don't want to upgrade my phone to the latest half-baked iOS version, so Apple purposefully degrades the functionality of my new AirPods 3. Siri won't switch noise cancellation modes, I can't see the battery status, they get relegated to the "generic bluetooth device" section, and even the battery widget will display three identical headphone icons for headphones and the case.
How do I know this is done purposefully and not just because AirPods 3 are so new and different from AirPods 2? Well, macOS has been neglected of late, and Apple didn't find the time to break things there, so Airpods 3 work with macOS just as well as Airpods 2 did — switching modes, battery status display, etc.
It's very disappointing, and not a great customer experience.
- Super impressive. Looks like the author also reimplemented Apple’s new Liquid Glads UI in Jetpack Compose?
- I have been using AirPods with Android phones for several years now.
by wodenokoto
0 subcomment
- I’m trying to connect my airports pro 2 to my old, old 2011 iPod. It’s not going very well.
While I haven’t managed to find anything close to an answer using google, chatgpt is quite confident it’s because of Bluetooth versions.
Surely Bluetooth 5 is backwards compatible, but then again if the AirPods thinks it’s connected to an iOS device it seems reasonable that it will start using all the proprietary iOS features and then communication breaks down.
So to me, liberation of airpods is an on-device issue.
- Tangent, sound does take knowledge obv to setup to sound good.
I remember flashing the Pine64 Pine Buds and man I could not get them to sound right aside from the original settings. They were not great to begin with but yeah.
The UI looks great
by notsylver
2 subcomments
- It seems to let you access head tracking data, so now I'm really curious if it would be accurate enough to use with games (eg, microsoft flight sim/arma 3/euro truck simulator 2 head tracking). There is probably a lot of other interesting use cases for it too, but I'm stuck with windows for now so :(
- Apart from being absolutely unusable on any actually used Android phone, very weird that the author didnt bother to have any write up of how they actually did this, not really sure if its a rip off of the CAPods repo, will have to confirm that later
by wewewedxfgdf
1 subcomments
- Tim Apple will not be happy about this.
by roman_soldier
6 subcomments
- A lot of Apple products are designed to best work with other Apple products, that's part of their selling point. Would it not be easier to just buy non Apple headphones if you are not in the Apple eco system?
- Would be cool to decouple Apple Watches from iPhones, too.
by throwaway2037
2 subcomments
- Hi. I'm not here to troll. This is an amazing project. Why did they select AGPL license over just plain ol' GPL? It seems hard to imagine where the "A" is useful for this software.
- This is awesome. I wish we had real EQ on the iOS. Ideally PEQ.
- How does this interact with Apple Find My?
Will it mean if my kid travels with their phone (Android) and their AirPods and me/my phone (Android), I won't get a message about being tracked anymore?
That would be nice.
by ChrisArchitect
0 subcomment
- A Show HN: thread submitted by the dev earlier in the year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42610644
by darkest_ruby
0 subcomment
- Require rooted android?
That makes it useless for 99% of us
- “Do you want to sell AirPods?”
No. They want to sell more i-devices so this is just punishment for not fully participating.
by hsbauauvhabzb
1 subcomments
- AirPods are my favourite headphones by a mile. I’d love to get microphone mode working on Linux without the audio sounding terrible.
I’d also be curious if anyone can offer insight on why the range is so much better when paired with my iPhone than my computer.
by bunabhucan
4 subcomments
- Where did the "libREated" in the title come from?
- Companies are doing some crazy stuff to block other devices. One of the worst things that I have seen is that on MacOS you cannot use the AirPods in a Microsoft Teams call.
by Synaesthesia
0 subcomment
- Can someone please figure out how to make my AirPods Pro 2 work with my MacBook Pro M1? Because they just don't work.
- Libreated?
by bigstrat2003
0 subcomment
- Who is buying these that isn't an Apple fanatic? If you aren't a fanboy, then any old pair of earbuds is both cheaper and better than AirPods.
- I've gifted multiple pairs of AirPods to android users and they all seem to work fine
by DeathArrow
1 subcomments
- Now I would like to see a software to unlock features for Tesla. You payed for the car, why pay subscriptions?
by cncjchsue7
4 subcomments
- There is much better and much cheaper non apple air pods these days.
by 12345hn6789
0 subcomment
- Requires your phone to be rooted.
- OT, but I am as disappointed in the firwmare of Apple airpods as I am in the one of Pine64 for their pinebuds.
The first is not hackable and the second promised much and delivered just an initial dump with dubious sdk license
- im all for corporate witchhunts, but airpods have been one of the moat universally compatible items Apple has made out of the box?
- Huh? I was always able to use AirPods with the Nintendo Switch, for example. Even share them with friends' phones. I didn't know they required "liberating" but good news I suppose.
I wish their displays could be liberated though
- Great project
- [flagged]
- Huh? I've used all my airpods with my linux and android systems.. nothing was liberated.. just more features were added
Hacker News