5 Free Apps You Need to Install to Get the Most Out of Your AirPods

Listening to music and podcasts is the most common way to use AirPods. But dig a little deeper into the AirPods settings and you’ll discover some clever things you didn’t know you could use your AirPods for. For example, there’s Camera Remote, which lets you use your AirPods as a remote control for your Camera app. You also have hearing assistance, designed to make calls and surroundings much clearer for people with hearing loss. AirPods settings even include other non-music features, such as call control, Siri activation, and live translation.

But aside from these unique features that you can easily access right away, your AirPods can do so much more with the help of some free third-party iOS apps. These apps use the AirPods’ built-in sensors to make the earbuds useful for all kinds of other applications beyond listening to songs and podcasts. If you want to use your AirPods to their full potential, here are five iPhone apps you should install.

Soul Trace is a meditation app unlike any other on the App Store. That’s because it doesn’t just play background sounds while you meditate. Instead, the app synchronizes its audio and visual cues with your breathing. To do this, it relies on the head tracking function of your AirPods. Thanks to the motion sensor built into the earphone, Soul Trace can know if you are inhaling or exhaling. It then synchronizes this action with the light dots it displays on the screen and the audio played through your AirPods. When you inhale, the points move downward and the sound seems to go down as well. When you exhale, the opposite happens. Dots and audio go up. This makes your meditation session more immersive and helps you stay focused.

Soul Trace keeps a history of your meditation sessions, each supplemented with relevant information about how you did it. Simply open one of your sessions in the Past Sessions section and you will see your total meditation time, the number of breaths you took, and your estimated rate of breaths per minute. You’ll also find other data here, including the phases of your breathing cycle (a graph of how long you inhaled, held your breath, exhaled, and held again), hold phases, breathing phases, and breathing and holding.

By default, Soul Trace plays water sounds during your meditation. You can, however, replace it with one of the eight other sounds available, such as wind, fire, bell, tanpura, chimes, white noise, music and mantra.

Jumping rope is one of the simplest yet most effective ways to exercise. If you love this workout and want to get a better idea of ​​your progress with each session, Jumpee is one of the essential fitness apps you should install. Jumpee uses the motion sensor in supported AirPods (AirPods Pro, AirPods 3 and later, and AirPods Max models) to automatically track your jump count. It also records how long your jump rope session lasted, how many jumps you did per minute, and how many calories you burned. You will see all this data on your phone during training.

In addition to on-screen data, Jumpee also gives you audio feedback on your progress in your AirPods. You can set the app to beep with every jump you make and tell you the current number every ten, 20, or 100 jumps. The app settings also include a volume slider, allowing you to customize the sound level of audio signals.

In our testing with the AirPods Pro 3, Jumpee counted fairly accurately. You don’t really have to jump too high for it to sign up on the app. AirPods are sensitive enough to only count regular jumps. Another advantage is that Jumpee even works with a single AirPod and allows you to listen to YouTube Music, Spotify or your favorite music streaming platform while you workout.

Jumpee is a free iOS application. But the downside is that it constantly displays advertisements on the screen. You will also be prompted to watch an ad to record your workout data after each session. If you want to use the app without ads, you will need to subscribe to the monthly or annual plan.

When it comes to your health, posture is probably the last thing on your mind. But it should not be neglected. According to Harvard Health, when you have poor posture, you’re more likely to experience back pain, headaches, and limited oxygen intake. To avoid these health complications and appear more composed, you need to pay attention to your posture. A free iOS app that can help is Posture Pal.

Using your AirPods, Posture Pal can monitor your head position to check whether your posture is good or bad. If he catches you slouching, you’ll hear a brief warning sound and the screen will turn red. If you keep good posture, the screen stays blue and you won’t hear the annoying beeps. You can easily adjust the sensitivity of Posture Pal’s posture tracking feature and choose between high, medium and low. High sensitivity detects even the slightest downward tilt of your head, while low sensitivity is more forgiving and won’t signal poor posture unless you really lower your head.

Posture Pal’s tracker can run indefinitely, but you can also choose to track your posture for one, five, or 10 minutes. You can also choose 15, 30, or 60 minutes, but these require a Posture Pal Pro account. To get Posture Pal working, you’ll need AirPods with motion sensors, which includes AirPods 3 or newer, any generation of AirPods Pro, and AirPods Max.

You wouldn’t normally use your AirPods in the rain or by the pool. But on the rare occasion you do, there’s a good chance water will get into the earbuds. This can easily ruin the sound quality of your headphones. That’s why it’s a good idea to install the WaterDrop app on your phone. It plays the frequency you choose – either 120 Hz, 160 Hz, 300 Hz or 500 Hz – to vibrate the AirPods enough to expel water from the small speaker. You can start with a lower frequency and then move to a higher frequency after a few minutes. Make sure the volume is turned up to maximum, the earphones are removed and tilted downward for optimal results.

In addition to the four frequencies, WaterDrop includes a dedicated sound to remove water from your AirPods. It emits a constant high frequency tone specially optimized for AirPods. This feature is locked behind a subscription, however, so if you use the free version, you will have to make do with the four free frequencies.

Since you won’t be wearing the AirPods while using WaterDrop, you’ll need to turn off automatic ear detection. This way, sound will still play through the headphones even if they are not in your ears. To turn off automatic ear detection, go to your iPhone’s Settings and open AirPods at the top. Under Audio, turn off automatic ear detection.

In terms of performance, users reported that WaterDrop worked well for their wet AirPods. One mentioned that it only had to play the AirPods’ dedicated tone once. Another said it takes about an hour of reading frequencies to get the AirPods working again.

There are instances when you are bored to death – perhaps while waiting at the airport, in a long queue at the supermarket, or in the hotel lobby before check-in. During times when you want to entertain yourself without scrolling through social media, AirPong Motion has you covered. It’s a basic ping pong game with a paddle on each side of the screen and a bouncing ball in the middle. The goal is to keep the ball in play as long as possible.

But instead of tapping the screen to move the paddle, you have to control it with a head movement while wearing compatible AirPods. AirPods track your head movements and adjust the position of the paddle accordingly. Sure, it sounds simple enough, but the added challenge of guiding the paddle with just your head is what makes this free iOS game worthwhile. It will take some time to get used to the control, and as the game progresses, the speed also increases.

AirPong Motion lets you play alone or with another player. As you play, you can rank up on the leaderboard and earn achievements. Beyond gameplay, AirPong Motion also offers customization options. It includes free colorful themes to choose from. You can even change the color of the paddle to your liking.

In putting together this list, we focused on apps that require AirPods to work or offer features exclusive to AirPods. We’ve included a mix of practical, fun, and utility apps to highlight the many smart ways to use your AirPods. We also made sure that most apps were well received, with a rating of at least 4.2 stars on the App Store.