- AirPods finally get a universal custom EQ
- You will be able to see live results while a song is playing
- It should arrive in iOS 27, as part of the AirPods Settings screen
Apple just announced that one of the most requested features from AirPods users is finally coming to iOS 27: a custom equalizer. Announced during the WWDC 2026 keynote, Apple didn’t reveal all the details of the feature, but we got a first look at it.
There will be a screen that looks like the image at the top of this page, and if you press “Custom”, a blue line will be superimposed on the frequency graph. You seem to be able to move the blue line to increase or decrease the frequency bands.
There’s a live waveform being played, so it looks like you’ll be able to see the result on the live sound signature, as well as hear it, obviously.
In the past it was possible to make some changes to the sound of AirPods using accessibility tools, but this really isn’t designed to make subtle changes to your music profile, it’s designed for the hearing impaired to increase the frequencies they struggle with.
There is also an equalizer in Apple Music, but it doesn’t help if you use another app for music and doesn’t preserve the equalizer when you change devices or other apps in general.
There are some interesting differences in the sound of different AirPods models. The original AirPods Max are much more neutral than the AirPods Pro 3, for example, and I can easily see that some people might choose to give the ears a little more oomph at times – or might just want to take a slight edge on the earbuds.
However! The obvious thing missing from the images we’ve seen so far is a clear option to save presets, so the scenario I described above may not be that simple. This could of course be in the final version, or there could be a way to create it using shortcuts.
However, I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple keeps this pretty basic. The screen doesn’t really encourage you to make changes: the description in the setting says: “AirPods are designed and manufactured by Apple to accurately represent music, TV shows, movies, and calls. If you prefer a different sound profile, you can customize how AirPods represent any audio being played.”
Still, considering the original AirPods model launched in December 2016, I’m just happy we can finally get it as an option.
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