Airpods Pro 2 paired with my Mac but don't appear in my account, Find My, System Settings, ...

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Airpods Pro 2 paired with my Mac but don't appear in my account, Find My, System Settings, ...

I bought Airpods Pro 2 new from apple store, and paired them with my android phone, and then to my mac mini M2 running Ventura 13.6.1. and my Macbook Pro running Mojave.

I can connect them and use them for playback on all devices, but I can't seem to be able to add them to My Apple ID and access their settings (e.g. change the way the airpods button work) or other features (find my):

In the settings I have seen people's screenshot where there is an Airpods Pro line along with Keyboard/Mouse/Printers & Scanners, but mine don't appear

In the bluetooth settings, I see them and I can click the "i" button, but in the popup window I see information (serial number, etc), I can change the "connect to this mac" option, but clicking on "Headphones settings..." button doesn't do anything.
- Note that I noticed the version of Airpods was updated yesterday as a new firmware was released

In the menubar, I never saw the "sound" icon even though in settings it was supposed to be visible "when active", not sure if this is normal but I changed this to "always" and now I see it, but the icon is always the big headphones, not the airpods logo that I have seen on other people's screenshot. From there I can change the ANC spatial mode, but I still can't change other Airpods settings. Clicking on Sound Settings just takes me to the audio section of System Settings with input/output settings.

In "Find My" application, I can see 2 devices, my Mac Mini M2 (for which I just enabled location services) and my Macbook Pro (which doesn't have location services enabled, but it still appears in the list) but not my Airpods and I don't see any way to add them even though the help page says we should be able to do so with Mac OS 13

After noticing those issues I removed them from all devices and reset them (long press on the case button), paired them again only to my Mac Mini, but it's still the same.

I searched on this forum and elsewhere but can't seem to find any tip to fix it.

Any idea before I go back to the apple store to check with them ?

AirPods Pro (2nd generation)

Posted on Nov 13, 2023 7:32 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

sebastienlebreton Author

Level 1

8 points

Dec 13, 2023 3:49 PM in response to sebastienlebreton

Some news for other people who might face similar issues:

I tried to connect my airpods to an imac in an apple store, and I was able to access settings etc, pretty much everything I listed as not working in my initial post, except "Find My" (I didn't try to log into my apple account) and the "enable case sounds" in settings was greyed out.

So it looked like a software issue

I just tried sonoma on an external drive with my mac mini M2, and I have the same results as above, so it means that you definitely need Sonoma (I'm using Ventura on my main drive) in order to be able to access these airpods pro settings which I find pretty strange as I'm not using a 10-year old system... Very surprised that Apple didn't include necessary things in latest Ventura updates to support the latest airpods pro ! Especially when upgrading the airpods seemed to work with Ventura. All of this doesn't really make sense...

Now the remaining issue for me is to be able to add them to my account and then see them in "Find My".

Also the case keeps on ringing randomly when I pick them up or put the case on my desk, I haven't found a pattern yet, seems to be related to "Find My" but can't figure out more. And I can't disable the case sounds as this option is greyed out in settings, even when running sonoma while being connected to my apple ID. I'm clueless on this one...

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Answer 2

Feb 9, 2024 7:00 PM in response to sebastienlebreton

Final words for whoever would have similar issue:

After multiple resets, pairing, talking to apple support and sharing my screen to them I went back to the store and they were able to pair and have it showing up on their devices in lab (not the ones in the store as they have some limitations regarding apple id sign-in) so it seemed to confirm the airpods were actually ok, but some sort of software issue prevented it to work well with my computers.

Went back home, tried again, hoping that the reset they did was different from what I did somehow, but it was still the same. Another clueless session with apple support and I'm back in the store with the airpods, my macbook pro (running Big Sur) and my mac mini running latest sonoma. As I paired the airpods to my macbook pro to demonstrate the issue... it behaved differently from what I had seen before, the airpods did show up in the "Items" section of Find My, so it looked good. Tried it with the mac mini and nothing there. They did a few more tests and then the "explanation" was given. You can only pair airpods to an apple account using "mobile" devices such as an iphone, ipad, or macbook. Mac mini doesn't work. So it probably worked this one time at apple store because I paired to the macbook pro first, so the airpods got paired to my account and were no longer considered "orphans". I reset everything one last time, went back home, paired again on the macbook pro first, and I haven't heard the charging case sound since then. However, I still don't see the airpods in Find My on my Mac Mini, so I'm disappointed about that, the limitation doesn't make sense to me and this is not explained anywhere as far as I can tell, but that's how it is. I haven't tried it again, but they should appear when accessing Find My on my macbook pro though.

Hope this may help someone...

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Airpods Pro 2 paired with my Mac but don't appear in my account, Find My, System Settings, ...

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