iOS 19 will offer yet another reason to wear AirPods all day long

I don’t know about you, but I’ve noticed my use of AirPods steadily increasing over time. And with iOS 19, Apple plans to offer yet another reason to never take your AirPods off: live translation.

Live translation in iOS 19 will make AirPods even more useful

When AirPods first launched, they felt like a futuristic, wireless version of earbuds—but not much more.

Over time, thanks to features like Active Noise Cancellation, Transparency mode, Conversation Awareness, and more, AirPods started becoming more like augmented reality devices for your ears.

Then in iOS 18.1, AirPods Pro 2 added Hearing Aid and Hearing Protection features that offered even more reason to wear AirPods constantly.

In iOS 19, yet another upgrade will continue that trend.

Per Mark Gurman, Apple is preparing a live translation feature for AirPods running iOS 19.

Here’s how it will work:

If an English speaker is hearing someone talk in Spanish, the iPhone will translate the speech and relay it to the user’s AirPods in English. The English speaker’s words, meanwhile, will be translated into Spanish and played back by the iPhone.

Gurman implies that at least some existing AirPods models will gain the feature, but it’s also possible it could end up being exclusive to AirPods Pro 3 and its new H3 chip.

Depending on how often you’re in multilingual environments, this feature could be a game changer.

I live in New York City, where I encounter a wide variety of spoken languages every day.

The opportunity to not only understand what others are saying with my AirPods, but also hold an actual conversation with them via my iPhone sounds brilliant.

What that experience will actually feel like is all up to the implementation details.

But I have high hopes that Apple can make its live translation feature more seamless than any existing third-party solution.

Live translation, for users in multilingual environments, will be yet another reason to keep wearing your AirPods—even when you’re not listening to anything.

Do you expect to use iOS 19’s live translation feature with your AirPods? Let us know in the comments.