Apple AirPods are going to gain a feature to translate in-person conversations into another language on the fly, a new report claims, in what’s described as a ‘Star Trek-like experience.” The feature will come as part of a software, rather than hardware, update.
“The capability will be offered as part of an AirPods software upgrade due later this year… It will be tied to iOS 19, the upcoming update to Apple’s mobile-device operating system,” according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.
The fact that this upgrade can come through software alone is not entirely surprising: some rival earbuds for Android phones already offer this feature.
“The capability will work like this: 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 goes on.
Though it’s believed Apple is working on new versions of AirPods, with AirPods Pro 2 expected to be next to feel the love of new hardware, this change is part of the move to iOS 19 which Gurman says is the “biggest overhaul” in interface design for more than a decade.
The software route is one that Apple routinely takes to boost its products’ capabilities. For instance, in the last few months, Apple added hearing test and hearing aid features to AirPods Pro 2, to assist those with mild to moderate hearing loss.
There’s no mention in the report of whether the new feature will be limited to AirPods Pro models, for instance, or will also arrive for the recently updated entry-level earbuds, called AirPods 4.
The translating improvements will not be limited to the AirPods, it seems, with bolstering of translation technology beyond this feature also expected.
Other updates believed to be in the works include a pair of earbuds with cameras built in, designed to evaluate the place the wearer is in, though there’s no predicted timeframe for these.
