AirPods Max not working right? Make sure your ear cushions aren't inverted!

   

Recently my AirPods Max lost all dynamic functionality. They still worked as dumb bluetooth headphones, but that was it: no noise cancellation, no auto stopping on removal, and the buttons were unresponsive. After several restarts and resets, I was on the verge of admitting defeat when I suddenly fixed the problem by …

… wait for it …

Turning around one of the ear cushions! 🤦🏻‍♂️🙄 Which takes less time than the restart.

The left side ear cup had been inverted a couple days earlier. And that cripples “head detection.” And that is a prerequisite for most of the smart features of the product.

It’s not obvious enough which way is up for AirPods Max ear cushions — it’s “obvious” when you know, but super easy to miss — but in any case it should not be possible to accidentally install them upside down. It’s a ridiculous design glitch. I shudder to think how many people have feared that their breathtakingly expensive AirPods Max were hopelessly borked for this absurd reason.

One of the stranger troubleshoots in recent memory.

The giant “R” is certainly clear when backlit. But it’s still amazingly easy to miss. Notice the hole on the right side there — that’s why it matters. That is where the head-detection infrared sensors live (I’m assuming).

The whole AirPods max troubleshooting tale

Before working out the solution, I’d already restart and reset my AirPods Max about four times (which isn’t hard, but is also one of those things you always have to look up):

I’d also done about an hour of tinkering with many potentially relevant settings! I chased a software solution for as long as I did because of a very specific red herring:

I got a spurious warning from an app (SoundSource) which was, in fact, only another symptom of this problem. The app was flagging a known issue with AirPods Max on Mac … but it was a false alarm generated by the failure of head detection! The real issue was my stupid inverted ear cushion.

When that error occurred, SoundSource suggested a settings change, and so that is where my suspicions naturally fell. When I started to notice that AirPods Max were glitching, I following the troubleshooting principle of “what has changed lately,” and assumed the trouble probably had something to do with that bug and/or SoundSource’s suggested solution.

So I spent a fair bit of time barking up that tree, and I’m never getting that hour back. But hey, silver lining: I know more about SoundSource, and about AirPods settings. 😜

But that software setting wasn’t the only thing that changed recently …

There was exactly one software clue about the nature of the problem. If your AirPods Max have this problem, and if you happen to be looking at the AirPods Max settings, on an iPhone (not a Mac), then you will see a poorly formatted failure message briefly appear below the noise cancellation mode indicator, disappearing almost too fast to read:

“Place AirPods Max On Your Head To Use Noise Cancellation”

But … they were on my head! This weird error message was fully reproducible. And while it didn’t exactly explain the problem, it did somehow get me thinking about the other thing that happened recently…

My AirPods Max were blown 💨 off my desk in a freak windstorm!

My office can get some wicked cross breezes! That product is quite heavy to get thrown around, but get thrown around around it did, and it one of the ears pads fell off. I snapped it back on without thinking about it, because I assumed there was only one right way to connect them. Or that it didn’t matter. Because, if it mattered, surely doing it the wrong way wouldn’t be even be possible, let alone easy … right?! Because Apple is all about smart product design!

Apparently it matters. And the right way isn't obvious. The wrong way even feels good, thanks to that nice magnetic snappiness.

Full functionality was instantly restored by flipping the cushion.

There is a visual indication of the correct orientation: a large capital L or R printed inside. It’s not even particularly subtle … if you’re looking for it! If you're not? Not so much. It’s downright easy to miss if you’re not in the know. For instance, I asked my parents to find the visual indicator of the correct orientation for the ear pads, and they both failed… and were amazed when they finally saw the giant-but-low-contrast “L” and “R” printed inside them. Easily missed, despite their size.

Spotting the visual cue shouldn’t even be necessary, though. If the ear cushion orientation matters, then they should fit only one way!