AirPods Pro 2 aren’t working properly with Pixel 6 and 7

AirPods Pro 2 just came out a few weeks ago and are largely regarded as some of the best earbuds on the market. Unlike most Apple products, AirPods generally work really well with Android phones and are a great choice for everyone including Pixel users. Unfortunately, though, the latest AirPods Pro 2 aren’t working well Pixel due to a bug with A2DP offloading.

The bug is causing audio to fizzle out and stop after about 90 seconds of audio playback. Once the audio stops, the AirPods stay connected but playback stops. To get it working again, you need to disconnect and reconnect the AirPods, which will work for another 90 seconds before fizzling out again.

There have been plenty of reports on the Google Pixel subreddit of this issue, and I have noticed it myself with multiple pairs of AirPods Pro 2 connected to two separate Pixel 7 Pros, a Pixel 6a, and Pixel 6 Pro.

Fortunately there is a temporary fix: Enabling Disable Bluetooth A2DP hardware offload in Developer Options. This does fix the issue but requires developer to stay enabled. It also lowers audio quality through the earbuds. A2DP hardware offload moves the audio decoding from the phone to the earbuds which helps with compression and quality, especially using Apple’s H2 chip and processing in the earbuds.

We can’t know whether this issue is due to an issue with Google’s implementation of A2DP hardware offloading or something with the AirPods Pro 2. If it is an issue with AirPods Pro 2, Pixel users will have an issue getting the update installed because updating AirPods does require an Apple product. If it’s a Pixel issue, hopefully we can expect a fix from Google soon. Until then, disabling Bluetooth A2DP is the only way get AirPods Pro 2 to work.