For decades, listening to music on headphones meant experiencing sound in stereo: a left channel and a right channel. While stereo sounds great, it is fundamentally flat. When you sit in a movie theater, the sound surrounds you. The dialogue comes from the screen in front of you, the helicopter flies overhead, and the explosion booms from behind you.
Apple introduced “Spatial Audio” to bring this immersive, three-dimensional theater experience to your AirPods. Using advanced directional audio filters and dynamic head tracking, Spatial Audio tricks your brain into believing the sound is coming from physical points around the room, rather than from the tiny speakers jammed inside your ears.
This guide explains how to enable and configure Spatial Audio on your iPhone for the ultimate listening experience.
Hardware Requirements
Because this technology relies on specific gyroscopes and accelerometers to track the movement of your head in real-time, it only works with specific Apple hardware. You must have an iPhone 7 or newer, and you must be using one of the following audio devices:
- AirPods Pro (1st or 2nd generation)
- AirPods Max
- AirPods (3rd generation)
- Beats Fit Pro
How to Enable Spatial Audio via Control Center
The fastest way to turn the feature on or off is directly from the iOS Control Center while you are actively listening to music or watching a movie.
- Put your AirPods in your ears and connect them to your iPhone.
- Start playing a song on Apple Music or a movie on Netflix, Disney+, or Apple TV+.
- Swipe down from the top right corner of your iPhone screen to open the Control Center.
- Locate the vertical Volume Slider (which should now display a small AirPods icon inside it).
- Press and hold the Volume Slider.
The slider will expand to fill the screen, and you will see two buttons at the bottom. Tap the button labeled Spatial Audio. You will be presented with three options:
- Off: Reverts your audio to standard, flat stereo.
- Fixed: Spatialize the audio to sound like a surround sound theater, but the audio remains static regardless of where you turn your head.
- Head Tracked: This is the true Spatial Audio experience. The audio is “anchored” to your iPhone. If you turn your head to the left, the singer’s voice will seamlessly shift to your right ear, exactly as it would if you were watching a live concert.
How to Personalize Spatial Audio
Everyone’s ear shape is slightly different, which means everyone perceives 3D sound differently. Apple allows you to use your iPhone’s Face ID camera to scan the physical geometry of your ears and create a custom audio profile tailored specifically to your head.
- With your AirPods connected, open the Settings app on your iPhone.
- Tap the name of your AirPods, which should appear near the very top of the settings list (right under your Apple ID name).
- Scroll down and tap on Personalized Spatial Audio.
- Tap Personalize Spatial Audio… and follow the on-screen prompts.
The iPhone will instruct you to slowly move your head in a circle, using the TrueDepth camera system to map the exact contours of your face and ears. Once the scan is complete, your iPhone will adjust its audio algorithms to deliver a vastly superior, hyper-accurate surround sound experience.