Librepods allows Airpods features on Android & Linux, that are otherwise exclusive to Apple devices
Posted by TheTwelveYearOld@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 76 comments
Mention-One@reddit
Just stop buying unsupported hardware
SoupoIait@reddit
It's not unsupported, it's a bloody bluetooth device. It works out of the box, only in a basic form.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to have auto play / stop, control of ANC from the phone / PC, batrery info, etc.
Just because it's Apple doesn't mean it's bad. Most Airpods pffer very good sound, great ANC, and overall good value. That's whether you're in the Apple ecosystem or elsewhere.
And sidenote : the PC you use would be unsupported hardware, if it weren't for the community's work. The same work that they're doing here.
professorkek@reddit
After trying to find good TWS earbuds for years now, I think Airpods are probably the only Apple product that is truely the best value for experience product on the market. Nothing else has a better balance of convenience, features, quality and price. Unfortunately a lot of the software side has been locked to the apple ecosystem, until now.
Indolent_Bard@reddit
Yeah, but they don't have a replaceable battery, so screw them.
Arkanian410@reddit
What other wireless earbuds in this form factor have a replaceable battery?
Indolent_Bard@reddit
Sony's and a couple of Samsung, the fairbuds and the pinebuds. Not many.
sequential_doom@reddit
AirPods are very good though. I get why someone would want to use them. And with this theres community support now.
Careful-Major3059@reddit
how are they good lol sound quality is definitely bottom tier
swizznastic@reddit
Guy who doesn’t know anything about the TWS market shits on the Apple product because it’s an Apple product
Careful-Major3059@reddit
bluetooth audio at the end of the day its all compressed garbage
pt-guzzardo@reddit
Oh yes I guess I'll go drape myself in cables and an amplifier and a battery to power the amplifier and a ginormous set of open-ear cans when I'm going for a walk around the neighborhood.
aerir@reddit
It is inferior to wired audio, but is it garbage? Far from it, TWS is great for convenience when you are headed outdoor and quality is definitely serviceable. Keep the audiophile golden ear BS within /r/audiophile
Cry_Wolff@reddit
LDAC and aptX HD exist.
Careful-Major3059@reddit
yes they do, apple airpods don’t use those, its lossy bluetooth unless connecting to the vision pro
sequential_doom@reddit
K
hornethacker97@reddit
This post is almost 100% only relevant for audiophiles or people who are forced to iOS by peer pressure in an iOS centered family- or friend-group.
Carter0108@reddit
Audiophiles are not using AirPods.
AdventurousFly4909@reddit
They have the best product...
reeeelllaaaayyy823@reddit
Best is subjective. I like my wired headphones.
Obnomus@reddit
So when someone gives me a gift then I'm supposed to say "I don't want it because this doesn't work on Linux".
Zulban@reddit
They won't listen. They'll think they've got a nice workaround then a year later Apple will half cripple it because that's the business model. People excited about this don't have the life experience to know they are going to get burned.
Chris_Hatchenson@reddit
Got it, bought a Mac instead of Linux PC
Dev-in-the-Bm@reddit
LOL.
Wait another five years, and see if you're still calling your Mac supported hardware.
aerir@reddit
Linux community be like - use whatever you like, enjoy the freedom.
Except don't use Nvidia, Apple products, this bad that bad, we don't play that game anyway
atomic1fire@reddit
It's not so much that you can't use it, but that someone hasn't reverse engineered the fun parts, or the manufacturer hasn't opened up the internals to third party devs.
Although to be honest I don't think Apple really has a reason to push Linux adoption by making their products more compatible, short of maybe trying to edge out Windows desktop by creating an entire market microsoft can't break into.
Kevin_Kofler@reddit
Hardware compatibility lists have always been a thing in the real world. You are spoiled these days with most computer hardware just working. (Smartphones, on the other hand, are even worse than things used to be, with only select and old mainstream models like the OnePlus 6 and dedicated models like the PinePhone or Librem 5 having decent support.)
aerir@reddit
Totally, they are situations where some hardware or software just would not work with each other. But in this case - we should celebrate for better compatibilities/features added outside Apple ecosystem instead of 'do not buy unsupported hardware', which is still a fair statement.
The community needs to understand we want to keep using the things we have purchased previously, things like an Airpod from previous iPhone or Nvidia GPU from gaming laptop I purchased two years ago - more often than not, users will not try to make their life harder by picking odd hardware pairing if they have a choice (with some minor exceptions that enjoy having more challenges in their life)
SoupoIait@reddit
Frankly that guy's a joke...
Pope_Smoke@reddit
Yeah all 1% of buyers that want this to work will totally make Apple rethink and open source everything.
Ketomatic@reddit
Oh no way, pause when fall asleep? I will look into this later !
OsoGrosso@reddit
The biggest problem I see with this is that it still requires buying Apple hardware.
Eubank31@reddit
Looks awesome, I like my Airpods pro and my pixel.
Kind of annoying that Google won't fix a bug that would allow this to be used on non-rooted devices
Analog_Account@reddit
GrapheneOS!
Scandiberian@reddit
Love grapheneOS, hate the 4h total battery life.
pervertsage@reddit
That's a problem with your device, not the OS.
Scandiberian@reddit
Sure buddy. Everyone at r/googlepixel complains about how dogshit the pixel battery is (and side note, also heavy for no reason), but it’s my device. Gotcha.
pervertsage@reddit
I'd wager most people at r/googlepixel will be running stock vanilla android and not grapheneOS. If they're also having battery problems that would surely indicate the problem might be with the hardware if it's reproducible across ditros.
What are you doing so it's only lasting 4 hours? 4 hours is indeed shit and I've never experienced such poor battery performance on the three phones I've had grapheneOS on over the years.
Scandiberian@reddit
Which is exactly my point. Pixel battery is just bad, I’m not blaming it on GrapheneOS necessarily. Maybe we who have issues with it are the outliers and the majority have no issues with it, but for me the issue was bad enough that I no longer want to gamble with it again.
Having 4h of battery after 1.5 years of ownership is unacceptable. Never had a phone have this bad a battery before.
pervertsage@reddit
Yeah, so the problem is with your device, not the OS.
Chad-Buttsniff@reddit
Picture
Its your device.
Scandiberian@reddit
Question, how do you deal with banks not liking phones without google play services installed? Also WhatsApp?
Chad-Buttsniff@reddit
Dunno, my bank doesn't mind GrapheneOS. They have a list somewhere on GitHub if the banks that support GrapheneOS.
Scandiberian@reddit
My guy I used GrapheOS as well, battery life is the ae as standard pixel AKA dogshit.
Chad-Buttsniff@reddit
Yeah, problem with your device then.
Scandiberian@reddit
When did you buy your pixel?
Chad-Buttsniff@reddit
Whenever the 8 Pro was brand new.
Analog_Account@reddit
I'm getting normal full day battery life? I never ran the stock OS on a pixel so I don't know what that was like but running graphene on my second pixel so far and they have seemed to be in line with the battery life of the iphones I had before.
Scandiberian@reddit
It was fine-ish at first (would get about 8 hours per day), but after a year and a half the battery just became really bad.
The last straw was me having my phone at full charge at 9 am, and by 11.30 it was at 20% without me using it, just background activity alone. I don’t have bad charging habits either so I’ll just assume the phones battery degrades really quickly OR because GrapheneOS has no intelligent battery like stock pixel has, something got messed up down the line.
In any case, the battery never got anywhere close to the 2 days of battery life I now get on my iPhone.
Analog_Account@reddit
Like others have said... its your device or theres something weird going on software wise.
Graphene isn't for everyone... but your battery issues were not normal.
Scandiberian@reddit
I accept that. Again I know it's not just me as I see other people on r/Googlepixel complaining about battery life. I'll restate what I told the other guy: Whether the people who have issues with the Pixel battery are a majority or minority of users, I don't want to find out again. Once was enough for me.
Indolent_Bard@reddit
A BUG? Fuck. What bug?
5c044@reddit
https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/371713238?pli=1
Click the link and +1 it
AdventurousFly4909@reddit
"It's not a bug it's on spec🤓☝️"
nijave@reddit
In fairness, it seems like you can also equally yell at Apple for non-spec behavior--if the comments are to be believed
Eubank31@reddit
I don't know the details, but it's linked on the README
Google replied and seems to be aware but they haven't responded in months
Left_Revolution_3748@reddit
Good
Now we can enjoy airpods
DrDrWest@reddit
Don't buy Apple products, why give them money for not supporting other OSes?
kavishdevar@reddit
keeping the fact that they're airpods aside, do you think any other OEMs have an app for linux?
pt-guzzardo@reddit
Because nobody else makes a decent set of wireless earbuds without silicone tips.
Secure_Trash_17@reddit
Well, some of us came from Apple, and AirPods work fine on Android (the basics, that is, like ANC etc), and I'm not about to throw my Pro 2 away when they work perfectly fine.
jwintyo@reddit
Would this make it possible to connect 2 pairs of Bluetooth to one Linux device at once like Apple device can do or is that a hardware issue? (I have a Thinkpad t490s…)
someonesmall@reddit
You can already connect two bluetooth audio devices on Linux and play audio to both of them. https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/729301
jwintyo@reddit
Oh that is great to know, I will follow that and see if I can get it working! Thank you
full_of_ghosts@reddit
I mean, why would I want to buy horrifically overpriced AirPods, when alternatives of comparable quality are available at much lower prices?
TheTwelveYearOld@reddit (OP)
Idk but I'll never fucking buy sony headphones again. I bought XM5 at full price ($400) and like many others, the hinge suddenly broke off.
equeim@reddit
I had Sony Linkbuds S and their battery died after a year, just when the warranty expired.
deviled-tux@reddit
Like what exactly? Because the competitors are more expensive.
The AirPods Pro 3 have the best ANC in the market. So what are you comparing them to?
TRKlausss@reddit
Mmm that’s a hot take… I think Sony is market leader on ANC, but definitely at a higher price point.
NatoBoram@reddit
Bose QuietComfort Ultra are shite, though. I haven't tried the Apple ones but I bet they're better than those.
Helpful_Employer_730@reddit
This is a great step for hardware compatibility. I hope this leads to more open source drivers for other proprietary accessories.
kavishdevar@reddit
for everyone saying that we shouldn't be buying unsupported hardware in the first place: not a single OEM, let alone apple, has any app for linux to customize headphones. there are other projects who have made programs for the Galaxy buds, nothing's ears, etc., but none are "supported" by the OEM on linux. all obviously work as bluetooth headphones, but not with all the customizations you get from a phone app.
pikachus_ghost_uncle@reddit
That's really cool. It's a shame the android device has to be rooted in order to use it but cool progress never the less.
ult_avatar@reddit
Damn, this issue in the Bluetooth stack makes it obvious that android isn't a priority at Google anymore
lukepatrick@reddit
If you use KDE, this is also handy - https://github.com/can1357/kAirPods
ray591@reddit
This is nice. I can at least see my battery.
WSuperOS@reddit
I don't like Airpods, but this sounds great! Support for new features on new hardware is always welcome.