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  • Hacker News
  • Dang, was hoping this would let me use Airpods as both speaker and headset at the same time on Linux
    by OsrsNeedsf2P
  • You can use your AirPods as both a speaker (playback) and a headset (microphone) at the same time on Linux,

    but you must switch the Bluetooth profile to HFP (Hands-Free Profile) or HSP (Headset Profile).

    Note that this is the default for better quality (Bluetooth spec, not Linux).

    by DANmode
  • There is a PR for that https://github.com/librepods-org/librepods/pull/655

    I tried it out, it seems to work well. Hopefully it's not blocked by patents

    by notsylver
  • I feel the main useful feature that I’m looking for is the ability to use the unlimited multipoint on other devices. The 2 points that most other devices gives you is terrible. It would be nice to be able to quickly connect to my voip deskphone at work from time to time.
    by daft_pink
  • I'm really curious why some features are tagged "Will not be implemented" for Linux, but "Planned" for Android.
    by WhyNotHugo
  • because android has users
    by functionmouse
  • The dev here- there are exactly 2 features- Head Gestures and heart rate monitoring. Both have no use on Linux. On Android head gestures is to answer calls and heart rate will be provided to Health Platform.

    edit: there's just one that's not planned for Linux and planned for Andorid- HRM. Head gestures is already implemented on Android.

    by itsnoone
  • It would be useful to explain to people who don't currently own AirPods and don't really follow Apple stuff much what features are lost when AirPods are paired with a non-Apple device.
    by drnick1
  • There is a feature compatibility list…
    by JrProgrammer
  • So beware, i setup my APP3 on my daughters ipad and had hearing aids set with a hearing test. This way when connecting to my Pixel it would still apply the hearing aid adjustments, but I would not have other things like auto-pause when removing the airpod.

    Well, I installed this and now my hearing settings have been removed from the airpods. And I guess you could say that this would be obvious because librepods doesn't support the hearing aids, what is not obvious is that installing it takes a set of APP3 that has been already setup and basically wipes them. Good to know for the future

    by Nemi
  • I've owned several pairs of AirPods over the years and this is the first I'm learning about some of their features. I almost found myself wanting there to be a third column for indicating Apple support (of course I'm being facetious).
    by ctippett
  • Yes, I recently upgraded to the Pro 3 and it’s a sign of how old I am getting: I disabled a lot of the defaults (the head gestures to control music playback were awful when doing any serious yard work) promising myself I would investigate all the features in time. A few months later, I have a rough idea of how to play, pause and adjust volume with the weird (to me) stalk massaging.
    by tclancy
  • FYI android 17 fixes the bugs in the Bluetooth stack that previously required root to fix. But, this app still charges $5 for using features your air pods have. I'll be spending my afternoon forking and enabling them.
    by 12345hn6789
  • That’s why selling anything to developers is no fun, they don’t know how to value their time.
    by dewey
  • Hi! The developer here. The app requires a purchase only when you install it from Play Store. The FOSS version available on GitHub takes you to my GH Sponsors page where you can wait for a few seconds and return back to the app. Or you can also just click the Restore Purchases button. There's no need for a fork :)
    by itsnoone
  • I get the idea behind wanting to fork and improve it, I truely do. I also get the idea behind wanting to see how the innards work.

    However I'm a developer and I gladly paid the $5 so I can support the original dev for all the work that they have already done, and also for open sourcing it. I really don't want to maintain my own fork, sync it, build apks etc

    by Spill4288
  • This project is great. Hopefully one day AirDrop is liberated too. https://github.com/seemoo-lab/opendrop looked promising, but it seems stale. maybe one day.
    by taimurshasan
  • If you don't mind installing an app for it, LocalSend or LANDrop are great for this.
    by rkn7
  • This was solved a little while ago.

    https://www.android.com/quick-share/

    by mapontosevenths
  • Previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45941596
    by g0xA52A2A
  • Thanks! Macroexpanded:

    AirPods libreated from Apple's ecosystem - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45941596 - Nov 2025 (462 comments)

    by dang
  • I respect the work/hack involved.

    However why support a company (by buying airpods) that is this hostile. i.e. I wouldn't be surprised to see a patch to stop this.

    by vlod
  • i don’t know the devs motivation, but i own airpods and iphone

    every few years or so i consider jumping ship to android, but i don’t want to buy another set of headphones for that — projects like this make the migration path easier before fully committing

    by puszczyk
  • Realistically, there's not any other company selling wireless noise-cancelling earbuds with these features _and_ including documentation for folks to use those feature outside of some locked ecosystem.

    E.g.: Bose, Sony, etc don't include any documentation for any non-basic features, and the only way to even enable them is via the proprietary app which run on limited environments (notably: not Linux).

    I don't defend the practice at all, but no matter which hardware they picked, the practices are still the same.

    by WhyNotHugo
  • 0. For the love of the game

    1. Additional freedom for used purchasers, gifted purchasers, purchasers from a past era, whatever

    by DANmode
  • What's so hostile about it?

    They can't _add_ features on top of regular Bluetooth connectivity, that they choose to only offer on platforms they're able to fully control and QA ?

    Is even just making a feature exclusive really that 'hostile'? A company can't offer benefits for going with several of their products?

    Or you mean they _are_ hostile because you're _assuming_ they will try to patch this?

    by jorisw
  • This is my big conundrum with Apple. Their hardware is absolutely brilliant, but their combative nature against the users freedom on their hardware means I will never use it.

    Even if you can hack around it, it is the culture that treats the users as someone to be controlled and coddled that bothers me.

    by HerbManic
  • It's less hostile and more lazy. The Airpods use standard bluetooth for everything that bluetooth has. The stuff that doesn't work on non apple platforms is the configuration, changing what the squeeze actions do and loading firmware updates.

    There is no way to do this with standard bluetooth, you have to have a custom app for it. Apple just didn't build a custom app for other platforms but there is no reason they would care about someone else investing the resources in to building it. They still win because you bought the airpods and someone else spent the resources on making the app.

    by Gigachad
  • If I wasn't certain Apple will do their best to patch every avenue to this working in the future it might be motivation to buy AirPods.
    by jamwise
  • I'm not sure how Apple could disable this for existing Airpods. Maybe future Airpod models won't be compatible with this version of the mod, but they could update the mod.
    by smcg