Whether you are trying to sleep on a noisy transatlantic flight, focusing in a crowded coffee shop, or just trying to drown out the sound of a lawnmower outside your window, the Active Noise Cancellation (ANC) feature on your AirPods Pro or AirPods Max is arguably their most valuable feature. While you can usually toggle this mode by squeezing the stems of the earbuds themselves, it is often much faster and more precise to control it directly from your iPhone screen.
How to Access Noise Control via Control Center
To change your AirPods settings, you must use the iOS Control Center, which gives you direct access to hardware toggles.
- Ensure your AirPods are currently in your ears and actively connected to your iPhone.
- Open the Control Center on your iPhone.
- If you have an iPhone with Face ID (no home button), swipe down from the top right corner of the screen (over the battery icon).
- If you have an iPhone with a physical Home button, swipe up from the very bottom edge of the screen.
- Look for the tall, vertical Volume Slider. Because your AirPods are connected, this slider should currently display a small icon of your AirPods inside it.
- Press and hold your finger firmly on the volume slider for about two seconds until the screen blurs and the slider expands to fill the screen.
Activating Noise Cancellation
You will now see a dedicated menu for your audio hardware.
- At the bottom of the screen, tap the circular button labeled Noise Control.
- A small menu will fan out, presenting you with three options:
- Noise Cancellation: This uses the external microphones to listen to the environment and generate anti-noise, completely blocking out the world around you. Tap this to activate the feature.
- Transparency: This does the exact opposite, piping the outside audio into your ears so you can hold a conversation or listen for traffic while walking.
- Off: This disables both features, saving battery life and making them function like standard, passive earplugs.
Once you tap Noise Cancellation, you will instantly feel the vacuum-like sensation as the background noise vanishes. You can tap anywhere in the blurred background to return to your home screen.