AirPods Pro - Noise Cancellation with One AirPod setting not working

I too have been having this problem and could not get anything to work with only one air pod for my one good ear without going several steps into accessibility and then into bluetooth each time. What a pain! I took your advice and downloaded IOS 15 to my IPhone 11. Then I went into accessibility and clicked on NC with one air pod and it held the setting. It works great now. I can put one air pod in my ear and change from NC to Transparency using the switch on the air pod without having to go into settings and go through all the steps into accessibility and bluetooth etc. I tried turning off the phone and turning it back on again and the settings held. Thanks so much for letting us know! What a relief!

I have been trying to find a work around for this issue for over a month. This is what I did tonight, and it is working so far.

I downloaded the Shortcuts app. I created a noise cancelling shortcut. Now it doesn't switch back to transparency when I return my AirPod Pro to the case. I don't know if this will work long term, but so far so good. I hope this is a solution until Apple fixes the issue. This has been an extremely frustrating problem.

https://www.howtogeek.com/698325/how-to-control-noise-cancellation-on-airpods-pro-with-a-shortcuts-widget/

I hope I'm not speaking too soon, but it looks like this problem is not happening (at least for me so far) in iOS 15.

Have you found a solution?

This is driving me nuts lately. I am deaf in one ear so it makes no sense at all to use both pods at once. Especially when I previously only had to use one, and the noise cancellation worked perfectly.

Not only does “Accessibility - AirPods - Noise cancellation in one ear” reset itself, I also have to return to the Bluetooth - AirPod Pro - Info to turn “noise cancellation “ back on. Like you said: “Every. Single. Time.”

I have this issue with both my iPad Pro and iPhone 8 since most recently updating the iOS.

Thanks, Limnos, for pointing out the support article on how AirPods work, but the article offers no solution other than directing us to redo the settings every time we use the AirPods. The other article is lovely but there are no issues with crackling, loss of bass , or increase in background noise. The noise cancellation just turns itself off between uses.

I will definitely try that!

…have had some success with forgetting the AirPods on all my devices, then re pairing and making sure all devices had identical settings for all aspects regarding sound and AirPods.

but Then I didn’t need to use them for a while so could not confirm it as a permanent solution. It’s also not ideal bc, for example, if I don’t use AirPods with my iPad Pro, I would want the sound to come from all the iPad speakers, vs putting both channels into the left so I can use just one headphone. Then who wants to change that on my phone again and switch them both back when I switch from speakers to AirPods…

I had this problem with 14.5 it seemed to go away when I went to iOS 14.6 but now it’s back again with 14.7 can only think it is a bug as I’ve tried everything to sort this it’s so annoying. Hoping apple sort this out for iOS 15

I'm glad I'm not alone with this problem. I thought it was a problem with my particular iPhone (which is a 1st gen. SE). I've found that when I turn that phone completely off, Noise cancellation with one AirPod Pro seems to stay enabled while using my other devices.

I talked about it with Apple Support online and they sent me to the Apple Store to talk to a "genius".

The "genius" first tried to tell me that it's supposed to work that way. haha. Then he said I should completely reformat my phone and rebuild it from scratch. So we did that in-store. While it's true that the problem didn't manifest itself immediately, I decided I didn't want to go through all the headache of downloading my apps again, etc. So I restored from backup.

Later I tried resetting all settings (Settings > General > Reset > Reset All Settings), but that did not solve the problem, so I restored from backup yet again.

I've even tried setting up a shortcut to get to Accessibility Settings quickly, but apparently that's not possible.

I'd encourage everyone with this problem to submit a report to Apple here: https://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone/ so that they're aware of it.

It's nice that there's a shortcut for setting the Noise Cancellation mode. However, it didn't solve the problem for me.

I made the shortcuts, and set the AirPod to Noise Cancellation mode (after once again enabling Noise Cancellation with One AirPod).

Then I connected my AirPod to another device (my Mac). When I reconnected to my iPhone, the AirPod was back in transparency mode and clicking the shortcut results in the message, "Must have both buds in ear to set the desired liste... Cannot Set Listening Mode" I also get the same message when I set the AirPod to NC, return it to the case, and then put it back in my ear.

Interestingly, In a previous version of iOS, (maybe it was before iOS 14.5) I could set NC mode by asking Siri to set it, or by going to the Control Centre and long-pressing the volume control to reveal the NC modes. But now when I do either of those things, I get a similar message to the above ("Place both AirPods in your ears...") unless I first go three levels deep into Settings.

[Edited by Moderator]

AirPods Pro and AirPods Max Active Noise Cancellation and Transparency mode - https://support.apple.com/HT210643

- 'Special AirPods Pro Service Program for Sound Issues' such as crackling or static sounds, and Active Noise Cancellation not working as expected. --> https://support.apple.com/airpods-pro-service-program-sound-issues

My solution of 7/15 did not work. The solution above that suggesting factory reset etc did not work either.

I am still having to change settings in multiple places every single time I take my AirPod pro out of my ear. how ridiculous, especially given the cost of these things.

Thanks, I've submitted a report, hopefully they can resolve the problem.

Yes!! This absolutely drives menu insane! Have you found a fix yet?

This issue is SO frustrating!!! Please, fix this issue!!!

Wonderful!!!

Yes same here. It's working fine for me as well so far.