The AirPods Max: A Comprehensive Guide to Unlocking Its Full Potential

One of the standout features of the AirPods Max is its ability to analyze headphone audio and reduce any sound that exceeds a set decibel limit. This feature can be especially useful for individuals with sensitive ears or those who work in loud environments, as it provides real-time feedback on the volume levels they're exposed to. The iPhone's built-in audio analysis capabilities can also provide valuable insights into an individual's daily exposure to loud sounds.

To take advantage of this feature, users can access their iPhone's Health app and navigate to the "Hearing" section. From there, they can view a graph that displays the decibel levels of the sound they've been listening to over the past 12 months. This data can be particularly useful for identifying patterns or trends in an individual's exposure to loud sounds.

In addition to its audio analysis capabilities, the AirPods Max also features a unique ability to switch automatically between different Apple products. For example, if a user is using their Mac and then switches to their iPhone, the AirPods Max will seamlessly transition to the new device. However, this feature can sometimes be unpredictable, with the headphones switching to a different device unexpectedly.

Fortunately, users can manually override this behavior by accessing the Music app on their iPhone or the Control Center. From there, they can tap on the AirPlay icon and select the AirPods Max as their preferred audio source. This allows users to take control of which device is used for playback and ensures that the AirPods Max is always the primary listening device.

Another useful feature of the AirPods Max is its ability to be tracked using the Find My app. Even though the headphones don't contain a U1 chip, they can still be located if they become lost or misplaced. Users can access their device's location by going into the Find My app and navigating to the Devices tab. From there, they can view the location of their AirPods Max and even play a sound to locate them.

Finally, users may be wondering how to pair their AirPods Max with non-Apple devices or new Apple products. This process is surprisingly simple, requiring only a few taps on the headphones' noise control button until the LED light flashes white. The user can then tap on the iPhone's screen to initiate the pairing process, which typically takes just a few seconds.

By understanding and utilizing these features, users can unlock the full potential of their AirPods Max and enjoy a more immersive listening experience. Whether you're working in a loud environment or simply want to optimize your audio settings, the AirPods Max has got you covered.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's up guys my name is brandon and today i'm going to be showing you the first 16 things you should do after getting your brand new airpods max now even if you've had airpods or airpods pro in the past there are going to be some helpful tips and tricks in this video that you need to know to get the most out of your new headphones so we're not going to waste any time let's go ahead and jump right into it so the first one is going to be to update to ios 14.3 or later so this firmware is required to take advantage of all of the new features that the airpods max has to offer so all you need to do is go into your settings go to general software update and then you should see the update for 14.3 or later populate you should definitely go ahead and update to that so you can take advantage of all of the new features on the airpods max the next thing you need to do is get familiar with the new digital crown so this is just like the crown that you see on the apple watch and this is going to be what controls your media playback so if you press one time it's going to play your music press it again it's going to pause the music and if you press it twice quickly it's going to skip to the next song if you press it three times it's going to go to the previous song and if you tap and hold on the button it's going to invoke siri now you can also adjust how you want the digital crown to work so if we go into our phone and then go to our settings right here and then go to bluetooth and then to our airpods max click on the little i right there and then go down to digital crown this is where you can change how the digital crown functions for the volume so you can increase the volume by rotating either back to front or from front to back and you can see right there you could change it and you can see the little animation changes up there as well now the other button on the airpods max is going to be right in front of that digital crown right here on the right side and that's going to be your audio control button so this is going to be how you cycle through noise cancellation and transparency mode and you can actually change which modes get cycled through by pressing this button inside of the settings on your phone so if you go to your phone and go to the settings and then just back to bluetooth into the eye right there on your earpods max you'll see this button right here this section right here where it says button cycles between and from here you can change what you want that button to cycle between so if you want to be able to press it to turn everything off you can do that and then deselect like noise cancellation or transparency one or the other you could do that right there now another useful feature with the airpods max is going to be announce messages and announce calls so you can see who's texting or who's calling while your phone is in your pocket it will get announced to you through the airpods max if you go to notifications right here in your settings and then go to announce messages with siri right there you want to make sure this is toggled on and then you can see i have announced messages from and i have messages right here and you can go ahead and turn this on for either everyone contacts recent or favorites i like to have mine set to contacts right there we could do as you please but just make sure that is toggled on and it is extremely useful when you don't have access to your phone and then if you go back and then go down to phone and then you'll see announce calls right here go and tap on that and you can change that to headphones only headphones and car or always and you can see right there it says announce incoming calls when headphones are connected so this is useful if you're like on a bike ride if you're working out or whatever the case may be where you don't have access you know right away to your phone you can at least see who is texting or calling you now speaking of phone calls you also need to learn the phone controls with the airpods max and for this you're going to be using the digital crown for everything so if you press one time it will answer a phone call you have incoming on your iphone if you press twice it will reject the call and if you're on the phone with somebody and somebody else calls and you want to answer that and put the original person on hold you could just simply press one time on the digital crown or you can press and hold to reject the incoming call while you're on a separate phone call so taking and managing phone calls from the airpods max is very convenient and you do not need your iphone for everything the next thing you guys need to do is test out spatial audio with that dynamic head tracking so this is one of the most compelling airpods pro and especially airpods max features and basically what it does is it uses the built-in gyroscopes and accelerometers in the airpods max along with the ones in your iphone or ipad to track your head movements to locate where the iphone or ipad is so basically if my phone was sitting right in front of me like this and this is my head right here if i turn to the right a lot of the audio is going to start going into that left ear because it knows that my phone or the source the media source is right here so when i turn it's going to put the audio in the left or if i turn right it's going to put that audio in the right so it really mimics like real life like how you hear sounds in real life it's like a movie theater on your head it's really insane and you guys should definitely test it out now it only works with movies or tv shows that support dolby 5.1 7.1 or dolby atmos sound so you can actually find quite a few of these inside of the tv application and it works for a lot of movies and tv shows inside of the tv application here but of course it's not limited just to the tv app it just has to support you know dolby atmos sound or adobe 5.1 or dolby 7.1 so definitely test out spatial audio it is absolutely crazy the next thing you guys might want to do is buy a lightning to 3.5 millimeter cable if you plan on plugging your airpods max in for the best quality and you know having no latency or no lag now this is a 35 cable so it is definitely not cheap and i don't recommend it to most people but if you're planning on plugging in and again if you want the best quality and no lag this is the way to go so you can see here it does also come in black which is nice and it kind of matches with the black airpods max right here so i'm gonna go ahead do a little live unboxing for you guys you can see how it looks so so this is the cable right here it's pretty flimsy honestly i would have expected more from a 35 cable maybe be like braided or something like that but this is it and of course if you plug the lightning part into the airpods max you then have the 3.5 millimeter cable right here that you could plug in to whatever your source is and listen to these plugged in now you cannot use the airpods max as a pass-through source so you will always have to have battery on the airpods max if they die even if you plug this in you will not be able to hear anything so that's just something to keep in mind the next thing you might want to do is add the battery widget to your home screen so in ios 14 of course if you go ahead and tap and hold on the screen tap the little plus up in the top left and then go down to batteries right here you can add a battery widget to your home screen or to your lock screen so you can always see the battery level of your airpods mac so if you wanted to add something small like this you can go ahead and do that and you can see the air pods max are right there and it shows the volume level or you can add a big one to see the exact percentage of your airpods max right there so this is very helpful to just keep an eye on that battery percentage the next thing you guys might want to add is this toggle right here to the control center so this is going to be the hearing control so if you go to settings then to control center and then down you will see hearing right here you might want to add this into your control center because there's a pretty cool feature in this and it's called live listen so i'm going to go ahead and put my airpods max on so that this initiates and you can see right there we have live listen and we go and tap on that to turn it on you will see we get this right here and basically what this does is it uses your iphone as a remote microphone and it relays the audio from your iphone into your airpods max so for example if you had your iphone and you sat it downstairs and then you went upstairs with your airpods max you would be able to hear everything going on downstairs thanks to your iphone being used basically as a microphone a remote microphone so this is pretty cool for multiple situations and i think that's something worth having in the control center the next thing you guys need to do is understand how the smart case works so basically when you put your air pods max into the smart case right here they go in very easily and of course they shut magnetically right there there are two small magnets inside of this case but basically what happens when you put your air pods max in this case is that they go into a low power state apple actually calls it ultra low power states and basically that means that your airpods max are really never off unless they just completely die they don't have any battery left but from here you can charge the airpods max because you do have that open cutout right there and i would recommend charging the airpods max when they're in this case to get the fastest charging possible now you get 20 hours of battery life with active noise control and spatial audio turned on you could get longer battery life if you turn those off but these are actually really quick to charge especially if you have them like i said in the smart case when you're charging and just five minutes of charging will give you an additional one and a half hours of listening time so i would recommend charging the airpods max when they're in the smart case now speaking of charging as you guys know the airpods max comes with a usbc 2 lightning cable but not everybody has a usbc block like i have right here because of course the new iphones did not come with this so if you do not have a usbc to lightning block you could go ahead and purchase one i will leave a link down in the description below or you can still use the regular usba to lightning cable and block that you have to charge your phone you don't have to have a special you know block to charge these you can charge them with the same old one that you're charging your iphone with another thing to know about the airpods max is that the ear cushions are magnetic and come out very easily so if you pull on the ear cushion you will notice that it comes out very very easily you can take out both ear cushions just like so and actually apple also sells replaceable ear cushions in all five colors and they cost seventy dollars for a set of two so this could be very cool for mixing and matching colors and kind of just making your airpods max stand out from all of the others and you can make up to 125 color combinations if you mix and match each ear cushion so pretty cool customization there from apple with the air pods max and if you want to check out the page on apple.com where they sell these ear cushions i will leave that linked down in the description below so do you guys remember seeing the audio levels when we went to the hearing control center right here that i showed earlier well you can actually change what is classified as too loud for you so if you go to your settings right here and then go to sounds and haptics and then to headphone safety you will see reduced loud sounds right there and you can actually set what loud is considered to use if you have really you know sensitive ears maybe it's only 80 decibels but if you have you know a lot you can hear a lot and you you know are maybe hard of hearing you can maybe up that to 100 decibels and that's going to be what's classified as loud to you and you can see there it says your iphone can analyze headphone audio and reduce any sound that is over a set decibel limit and you can see when you pair that with the top setting right here for headphone notifications it will actually show you how many times you've gone over you know 95 or 90 decibels over the last six months and it will be a counter right there and if you go into the health application you can actually see this graphed out so if you go down here and then to browse and then down to hearing you will see right here it shows the last seven days exposure right there and if we go ahead and let's just do the let's just do past 12 months right here so i don't have a ton of data for this but you can see this is the daily chart right here that i have from a while back and it kind of charts out the decibel level that i was hearing audio at so this is really useful information for a lot of people especially those maybe with sensitive ears or whatever the case may be but just know that you can turn that on right here inside of your settings and you can set your own you know decibel level now one of the best features with the airpods max is the ability to switch automatically between different apple products so like if you have a mac if you have an iphone if you have an ipad whatever is playing the media your airpods max will automatically or can automatically because you can turn this off it will switch over to that device automatically now it doesn't always switch when you want it to i've noticed this happens from time to time so some people may be wondering how can i switch manually to my airpods max and actually it's very simple if you go into let's just say music for example you will see this little airplay icon down in the bottom middle if you tap on that that's where you can manually connect to the airpods max as you see mine did not automatically connect to the iphone because something else was playing audio but now i just manually connected it now you can also do that from the control center so if you go to control center right here haptic press on this and then go to the little airplay icon that's flashing blue right there in the top right you go and tap on that you can see you get the option to select your airpods max or whatever audio source you want from there as well this is also where you can activate share audio if you wanted to share audio with another airpods pro or airpods max user another thing you guys need to know about the airpods max is that you can actually track them via the find my application so even though we don't have a u1 chip inside of the airpods max they're still able to be tracked so if you go into the find my application and then to the devices tab you will notice that the airpods max are right there if you tap on them you can actually play a sound or get directions to the airpods max if they are lost and the final thing you guys need to know about with the airpods max is how to pair them with a new device or a non-apple device so this is a very simple process all you have to do is simply press and hold on the noise control button until the led light flashes white so the led of course is down here next to the lightning port right there and you can see it's flashing green right now which means it is connected but if we tap and hold on that or if you press and hold on that button you'll notice that it turns white just like so and that means that it is discoverable and it's looking for a new device as you can see it just paired up with my iphone right here but and you can see it says connect right there so that's how you connect it with a new device or a non-apple device so there you have it guys those are the first 16 things to do and kind of just tips and tricks to know with your brand new airpods max so i hope you guys enjoyed this video if you did i would appreciate if you gave it a thumbs up and of course make sure you guys subscribe for a lot more airpods max coverage coming very very soon also let me know in a comment down below what your favorite feature overall of the airpods max is is it the comfort is it the build quality is it the sound is it noise cancellation let me know your thoughts down in the comment below but anyways guys thanks again for watching and i'll see you soon youwhat's up guys my name is brandon and today i'm going to be showing you the first 16 things you should do after getting your brand new airpods max now even if you've had airpods or airpods pro in the past there are going to be some helpful tips and tricks in this video that you need to know to get the most out of your new headphones so we're not going to waste any time let's go ahead and jump right into it so the first one is going to be to update to ios 14.3 or later so this firmware is required to take advantage of all of the new features that the airpods max has to offer so all you need to do is go into your settings go to general software update and then you should see the update for 14.3 or later populate you should definitely go ahead and update to that so you can take advantage of all of the new features on the airpods max the next thing you need to do is get familiar with the new digital crown so this is just like the crown that you see on the apple watch and this is going to be what controls your media playback so if you press one time it's going to play your music press it again it's going to pause the music and if you press it twice quickly it's going to skip to the next song if you press it three times it's going to go to the previous song and if you tap and hold on the button it's going to invoke siri now you can also adjust how you want the digital crown to work so if we go into our phone and then go to our settings right here and then go to bluetooth and then to our airpods max click on the little i right there and then go down to digital crown this is where you can change how the digital crown functions for the volume so you can increase the volume by rotating either back to front or from front to back and you can see right there you could change it and you can see the little animation changes up there as well now the other button on the airpods max is going to be right in front of that digital crown right here on the right side and that's going to be your audio control button so this is going to be how you cycle through noise cancellation and transparency mode and you can actually change which modes get cycled through by pressing this button inside of the settings on your phone so if you go to your phone and go to the settings and then just back to bluetooth into the eye right there on your earpods max you'll see this button right here this section right here where it says button cycles between and from here you can change what you want that button to cycle between so if you want to be able to press it to turn everything off you can do that and then deselect like noise cancellation or transparency one or the other you could do that right there now another useful feature with the airpods max is going to be announce messages and announce calls so you can see who's texting or who's calling while your phone is in your pocket it will get announced to you through the airpods max if you go to notifications right here in your settings and then go to announce messages with siri right there you want to make sure this is toggled on and then you can see i have announced messages from and i have messages right here and you can go ahead and turn this on for either everyone contacts recent or favorites i like to have mine set to contacts right there we could do as you please but just make sure that is toggled on and it is extremely useful when you don't have access to your phone and then if you go back and then go down to phone and then you'll see announce calls right here go and tap on that and you can change that to headphones only headphones and car or always and you can see right there it says announce incoming calls when headphones are connected so this is useful if you're like on a bike ride if you're working out or whatever the case may be where you don't have access you know right away to your phone you can at least see who is texting or calling you now speaking of phone calls you also need to learn the phone controls with the airpods max and for this you're going to be using the digital crown for everything so if you press one time it will answer a phone call you have incoming on your iphone if you press twice it will reject the call and if you're on the phone with somebody and somebody else calls and you want to answer that and put the original person on hold you could just simply press one time on the digital crown or you can press and hold to reject the incoming call while you're on a separate phone call so taking and managing phone calls from the airpods max is very convenient and you do not need your iphone for everything the next thing you guys need to do is test out spatial audio with that dynamic head tracking so this is one of the most compelling airpods pro and especially airpods max features and basically what it does is it uses the built-in gyroscopes and accelerometers in the airpods max along with the ones in your iphone or ipad to track your head movements to locate where the iphone or ipad is so basically if my phone was sitting right in front of me like this and this is my head right here if i turn to the right a lot of the audio is going to start going into that left ear because it knows that my phone or the source the media source is right here so when i turn it's going to put the audio in the left or if i turn right it's going to put that audio in the right so it really mimics like real life like how you hear sounds in real life it's like a movie theater on your head it's really insane and you guys should definitely test it out now it only works with movies or tv shows that support dolby 5.1 7.1 or dolby atmos sound so you can actually find quite a few of these inside of the tv application and it works for a lot of movies and tv shows inside of the tv application here but of course it's not limited just to the tv app it just has to support you know dolby atmos sound or adobe 5.1 or dolby 7.1 so definitely test out spatial audio it is absolutely crazy the next thing you guys might want to do is buy a lightning to 3.5 millimeter cable if you plan on plugging your airpods max in for the best quality and you know having no latency or no lag now this is a 35 cable so it is definitely not cheap and i don't recommend it to most people but if you're planning on plugging in and again if you want the best quality and no lag this is the way to go so you can see here it does also come in black which is nice and it kind of matches with the black airpods max right here so i'm gonna go ahead do a little live unboxing for you guys you can see how it looks so so this is the cable right here it's pretty flimsy honestly i would have expected more from a 35 cable maybe be like braided or something like that but this is it and of course if you plug the lightning part into the airpods max you then have the 3.5 millimeter cable right here that you could plug in to whatever your source is and listen to these plugged in now you cannot use the airpods max as a pass-through source so you will always have to have battery on the airpods max if they die even if you plug this in you will not be able to hear anything so that's just something to keep in mind the next thing you might want to do is add the battery widget to your home screen so in ios 14 of course if you go ahead and tap and hold on the screen tap the little plus up in the top left and then go down to batteries right here you can add a battery widget to your home screen or to your lock screen so you can always see the battery level of your airpods mac so if you wanted to add something small like this you can go ahead and do that and you can see the air pods max are right there and it shows the volume level or you can add a big one to see the exact percentage of your airpods max right there so this is very helpful to just keep an eye on that battery percentage the next thing you guys might want to add is this toggle right here to the control center so this is going to be the hearing control so if you go to settings then to control center and then down you will see hearing right here you might want to add this into your control center because there's a pretty cool feature in this and it's called live listen so i'm going to go ahead and put my airpods max on so that this initiates and you can see right there we have live listen and we go and tap on that to turn it on you will see we get this right here and basically what this does is it uses your iphone as a remote microphone and it relays the audio from your iphone into your airpods max so for example if you had your iphone and you sat it downstairs and then you went upstairs with your airpods max you would be able to hear everything going on downstairs thanks to your iphone being used basically as a microphone a remote microphone so this is pretty cool for multiple situations and i think that's something worth having in the control center the next thing you guys need to do is understand how the smart case works so basically when you put your air pods max into the smart case right here they go in very easily and of course they shut magnetically right there there are two small magnets inside of this case but basically what happens when you put your air pods max in this case is that they go into a low power state apple actually calls it ultra low power states and basically that means that your airpods max are really never off unless they just completely die they don't have any battery left but from here you can charge the airpods max because you do have that open cutout right there and i would recommend charging the airpods max when they're in this case to get the fastest charging possible now you get 20 hours of battery life with active noise control and spatial audio turned on you could get longer battery life if you turn those off but these are actually really quick to charge especially if you have them like i said in the smart case when you're charging and just five minutes of charging will give you an additional one and a half hours of listening time so i would recommend charging the airpods max when they're in the smart case now speaking of charging as you guys know the airpods max comes with a usbc 2 lightning cable but not everybody has a usbc block like i have right here because of course the new iphones did not come with this so if you do not have a usbc to lightning block you could go ahead and purchase one i will leave a link down in the description below or you can still use the regular usba to lightning cable and block that you have to charge your phone you don't have to have a special you know block to charge these you can charge them with the same old one that you're charging your iphone with another thing to know about the airpods max is that the ear cushions are magnetic and come out very easily so if you pull on the ear cushion you will notice that it comes out very very easily you can take out both ear cushions just like so and actually apple also sells replaceable ear cushions in all five colors and they cost seventy dollars for a set of two so this could be very cool for mixing and matching colors and kind of just making your airpods max stand out from all of the others and you can make up to 125 color combinations if you mix and match each ear cushion so pretty cool customization there from apple with the air pods max and if you want to check out the page on apple.com where they sell these ear cushions i will leave that linked down in the description below so do you guys remember seeing the audio levels when we went to the hearing control center right here that i showed earlier well you can actually change what is classified as too loud for you so if you go to your settings right here and then go to sounds and haptics and then to headphone safety you will see reduced loud sounds right there and you can actually set what loud is considered to use if you have really you know sensitive ears maybe it's only 80 decibels but if you have you know a lot you can hear a lot and you you know are maybe hard of hearing you can maybe up that to 100 decibels and that's going to be what's classified as loud to you and you can see there it says your iphone can analyze headphone audio and reduce any sound that is over a set decibel limit and you can see when you pair that with the top setting right here for headphone notifications it will actually show you how many times you've gone over you know 95 or 90 decibels over the last six months and it will be a counter right there and if you go into the health application you can actually see this graphed out so if you go down here and then to browse and then down to hearing you will see right here it shows the last seven days exposure right there and if we go ahead and let's just do the let's just do past 12 months right here so i don't have a ton of data for this but you can see this is the daily chart right here that i have from a while back and it kind of charts out the decibel level that i was hearing audio at so this is really useful information for a lot of people especially those maybe with sensitive ears or whatever the case may be but just know that you can turn that on right here inside of your settings and you can set your own you know decibel level now one of the best features with the airpods max is the ability to switch automatically between different apple products so like if you have a mac if you have an iphone if you have an ipad whatever is playing the media your airpods max will automatically or can automatically because you can turn this off it will switch over to that device automatically now it doesn't always switch when you want it to i've noticed this happens from time to time so some people may be wondering how can i switch manually to my airpods max and actually it's very simple if you go into let's just say music for example you will see this little airplay icon down in the bottom middle if you tap on that that's where you can manually connect to the airpods max as you see mine did not automatically connect to the iphone because something else was playing audio but now i just manually connected it now you can also do that from the control center so if you go to control center right here haptic press on this and then go to the little airplay icon that's flashing blue right there in the top right you go and tap on that you can see you get the option to select your airpods max or whatever audio source you want from there as well this is also where you can activate share audio if you wanted to share audio with another airpods pro or airpods max user another thing you guys need to know about the airpods max is that you can actually track them via the find my application so even though we don't have a u1 chip inside of the airpods max they're still able to be tracked so if you go into the find my application and then to the devices tab you will notice that the airpods max are right there if you tap on them you can actually play a sound or get directions to the airpods max if they are lost and the final thing you guys need to know about with the airpods max is how to pair them with a new device or a non-apple device so this is a very simple process all you have to do is simply press and hold on the noise control button until the led light flashes white so the led of course is down here next to the lightning port right there and you can see it's flashing green right now which means it is connected but if we tap and hold on that or if you press and hold on that button you'll notice that it turns white just like so and that means that it is discoverable and it's looking for a new device as you can see it just paired up with my iphone right here but and you can see it says connect right there so that's how you connect it with a new device or a non-apple device so there you have it guys those are the first 16 things to do and kind of just tips and tricks to know with your brand new airpods max so i hope you guys enjoyed this video if you did i would appreciate if you gave it a thumbs up and of course make sure you guys subscribe for a lot more airpods max coverage coming very very soon also let me know in a comment down below what your favorite feature overall of the airpods max is is it the comfort is it the build quality is it the sound is it noise cancellation let me know your thoughts down in the comment below but anyways guys thanks again for watching and i'll see you soon you\n"