It can be frustrating to suddenly drop a phone call or lose your music groove because one of your wireless earbuds has suddenly died. Know that you’re not alone when this inconvenience strikes. This technological headache even happens to the experts.
“Unequal earbud battery drain is such an annoying thing,” said Arthur Shi, a senior technical writer for iFixit, a website that allows people to share tech user manuals and sell phone parts for do-it-yourself repairs. “I have a pair of Anker earbuds, and the right one always dies 15 minutes faster than the left one.”
Some earbud battery disparity is normal. But when your earbuds die at wildly different rates, it often signals a wider software or user problem you should address.
“If one AirPod dies significantly faster — a 20% or higher charge-level difference— it often indicates either a usage pattern issue or a hardware problem,” Shi explained.
The good news is that with a lot of these earbud issues, you may able to address this with a quick, easy fix. But first, you need to diagnose the problem.
1. Your ‘primary’ earbud is draining faster.
One of the most common culprits for your uneven battery drain is the device’s design.
“In older Bluetooth earbuds, one earbud is often designated as the ‘primary connection’ and will need to work harder, draining the battery faster,” Shi explained.
The ‘primary’ earbud that handles the Bluetooth connection from the music source will pass the signal along to the ‘secondary’ earbud, explained Antonette Asedillo, senior test project leader at Consumer Reports. As a result: “This primary earbud might lose battery faster,” she said.
In Asedillo’s case, her right earbud acted as the primary earbud, but other headphone models might use either ear as the primary device and can automatically swap roles, she said.
2. You turned on the ‘noise-canceling’ feature.
“The noise-canceling function can affect how long the battery can last on a set of headphones. Turning that off will reduce the amount of processing and may help even out the different ears,” Asedillo said.
3. You’re using the voice assistant feature.
Earbuds often have a voice assistant feature so you can make and decline phone calls and play music without needing to use your phone or your hands. But this might be why one earbud is losing battery faster than the other. When you configure your AirPods, for example, you decide which AirPod handles duties like listening for Siri.
“When ‘Listen for Siri’ is on, one AirPod actively and continually monitors for the phrase. This behavior can drain that AirPod’s battery faster than the other one,” Shi suggested. “Turning it off for one battery cycle can help rule out whether Siri is the culprit.”
To turn off Apple’s Siri feature, go to your Settings within your phone, tap “Apple Intelligence & Siri,” then select “Talk to Siri.” From there, you should be able to turn off Siri.
4. You take care of each earbud differently.
If you simply play one earbud more than the other, this will also naturally cause uneven battery loss. “If you wear only one earbud, the unused earbud may go into idle mode and will use less charge,” Asedillo said.
There’s a microphone in each AirPod, so you can make phone calls and use Siri, for example. If you’re only using one AirPod, this earbud will become the default microphone.
Cleaning your earbuds can also help your batteries drain more evenly too. “Charge connections might be dirtier on one earbud and may receive less charge as a result,” Asedillo said.
Unfortunately, no matter what adjustments you make, one earbud might eventually start dying more quickly than its companion. “Even when brand new, the two AirPods never have exactly the same battery capacity. Over time, the batteries will also wear out at different rates, causing battery life to diverge,” Shi said.
But for earbud issues you can fix on your own, try switching off a setting or giving them a good cleaning and seeing if that makes a difference.