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Comment by m12k | Hacker News Reader

>Annoyance 4: Sometimes, only the left or right AirPod plays sound. Taking them in/out of your ears doesn't fix it, you need to put it back into the case and take it back out, which sometimes, doesn't fix it. So you need to put your AirPods in/out of your case two or three times to fix it.

I run into this too, anyone know what's up with that? Is there some "listen with only one headphone in" feature that I'm accidentally enabling?

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It’s not a feature it’s a bug that will affect nearly all Bluetooth in-ears that don’t share a receiver.

The design of Bluetooth buds is such that one of the buds is elected to be the receiver of data from the phone, it then propagates its signal to the second bud.

What you’re experiencing is a disconnection of one earbud to the other.

FWIW: apples AirPods Pro’s rehandshake (from the “slave” side towards the “master” side) every 10s- so you can have a lot of luck just waiting for it to reconnect; that is assuming that the slave device _wants_ to reconnect; it might believe it’s not in your ear.

I disagree, it's definitely a feature in my book. It allows me to keep listening or stay on calls basically forever.

The ability to listen with one headphone in is definitely a feature, but the issue is that sometimes that's happening when it shouldn't be. You pulled both Airpods out of the case, put them in your ears, but only one connects. And you can't get the one with no sound to play sound until you put it back in the case and try again (sometimes takes a couple attempts)

I have a solution for that: with bare hands close your ears tightly with Airpods in them. Depending on the duration of such covering Airpods either just mute for a moment, or disconnect and reconnect right away. This helps to re-sync if one is ahead/behind another, or if one is not connected. I do that occasionally with my Airpods Pro connected to iPhone, Android or Macbook Pro - same outcome in all these cases. Such connection "reboot" helps in most described cases, though occasionally explicit Bluetooth toggle Off/On is needed, especially with the Macbook.

I imagine that hands and head create an improvised Faraday cage. Though 2.4GHz Bluetooth signal should nevertheless pass thought the body tissue, likely there is just a signa-to-noise ratio rapid drop which forces Airpods to re-establish the connection.

Yes, it's meant to reproduce the traditional one-earplug bluetooth experience for busy people. It also allows one to effectively bypass battery limits: if you hear the battery alert, you take one earplug off and put it in the case - it charges so quickly, it makes it doable to put it back on before the other dies, and then you recharge the other.

I don't think that's specific to AirPods .. I have Sony's bluetooth earbuds and that occasionally happens. Sometimes just waiting a bit and one of the ears will reconnect on its own. I chalked it up to the bluetooth standard.

Yes, there is a listen with only one headphone feature.

It even happens on AirPods Max because it has two chips internally for L/R. Buggy.

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