Filip Brož Wireless headphones AirPods are among the most innovative products, which Apple introduced last year. The headphones are ground-breaking mainly thanks to the pairing system in combination with the new W1 chip. However, AirPods offer much more, so I fell in love with them from the first moment and use them practically continuously during the day, not only for listening to music or podcasts, but also for phone calls.
Right from the first setup, my headphones were automatically paired with all Apple devices where I am logged in under the same iCloud account. So I jump from my personal iPhone to my work, iPad or Mac without any problems.
Everything runs smoothly on iOS. The headphones remember the devices they were last used on, and when I want to switch to, say, an iPad, I just open Control Center and select AirPods as the audio source. There are several ways to connect Apple headphones to the Mac, but they always require a few clicks.
So far, I have most often used the top menu bar, where I clicked on the Bluetooth icon and selected AirPods as the audio source. In a similar way, you can click on the row and on the sound icon and select wireless headphones again. I also brought up Spotlight a couple of times with the CMD + spacebar shortcut, typed “sound” and selected AirPods in system preferences. In short, it was not possible to just put on AirPods and listen…
On AirPods with a hotkey
Díky tip Mac Stories however, I discovered the handy Tooth Fairy application, which can be downloaded from the Mac App Store for one euro. After starting, a magic wand will appear in the top line of menus, through which I can choose the source to which I want to send the sound, just like through the Bluetooth or sound menu. But the main point of Tooth Fairy is that the whole process can be automated via keyboard shortcuts, when you give each Bluetooth speaker or headphones its own shortcut.
I set my AirPods to automatically pair with my Mac when I first booted up by pressing CMD+A, and now when I press those two keys, I get audio from my Mac on my AirPods. The abbreviation can be anything, so it's up to you what works for you.
In practice, everything works so that when I listen to something on the iPhone and come to the computer, I only need a single keyboard shortcut to automatically connect my AirPods to the Mac. It's a matter of two seconds and the whole thing is extremely addictive. In the end, the pairing process is even faster than on iOS.
Anyone who already has AirPods and uses them on a Mac should definitely try the Tooth Fairy application, because for one euro you get a really handy thing that will make the user experience more pleasant. In addition, the efficiency of the application is multiplied if you switch between several wireless speakers or headphones. No more clicking on Bluetooth devices in the top menu bar, everything will start to work just as magically as on iOS.
[appbox appstore https://itunes.apple.com/cz/app/tooth-fairy/id1191449274?mt=12]
Op
Really great app. I listen on AirPods from the iPhone, I go to the iMac, press a combination of keys and the headphones instantly switch from the iPhone to the computer.
AirPods are really a great thing, they are addictive and I like to use them to make phone calls. The only problem I noticed is that when the Beddit app is running on the iPhone to monitor sleep from the belt in the bed, the sound from the AirPods connected to the iPhone does not work. I always have to close the app, then they play themselves. Is it on purpose like I'm sleeping when I'm already in bed, or is that a bug?