If one AirPod is louder than the other

The following steps may help:

Check your settings:

• On your iPhone, go to: Settings > General > Accessibility > under "Hearing", check and, if required, adjust the audio volume balance slider between the left and right channels.

Clean your AirPods:

• Apple's instructions for cleaning AirPods are detailed here, under "Clean your AirPods with charging case":
  • Learn more about your AirPods with charging case - Apple Support
• To clean the meshes on your AirPods of any debris such as earwax, Apple advises using a small, soft-bristled brush that is clean and dry to brush the mesh carefully and gently:
  • If your headphones don't work with your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support

tried all the posted cleanup and suck it out and they didn't work.

contacted apple and did a hard reset and now they work just like new.

1 Open the case lid and keep both AirPods inside the case.

2 On the back of the case, press and hold the set-up button.

3 After 15 seconds, if the factory reset is successful, the LED on the case will flash amber and then flash white continuously.

4 Release the button after 15 seconds.

Good luck and happy listening!

I found the solution. Besides sucking into the AirPods, you can connect your AirPods to your MacBook (if you have one) then hover over bluetooth in the upper right, hover over your AirPods from the menu, then click "Open sound preferences." from there on "Output" make sure the lever is in the center.

Sometimes the level can be set to the right or left which would play sound on either the right or left side. Make sure your lever is in the center for equal volume on both AirPods, this will play the sound equally as loud on both of the AirPods.

Hopefully you guys will be able to use this in the future! Have a great day!

There are two main problems that could be causing this: volume settings or dirty airpods.

The former is simply fixed by going to settings -> general -> accessibility -> audio/visual and then scrolling down to the bottom to see the scroll bar that controls how loud one speaker is over the other. Adjust it to your needs.

however, if you still find that your airpods sound muffled or that just didn’t plain work, the solution is cleaning them. You should already have a set cleaning regime for them to improve and maintain good sound quality. However, I will share mine (that includes the suction method that some mentioned here as well minus the gross sucking-with-your-mouth part).

1. take a vacuum cleaner, shop-vac, or something of that nature with a small nosil. put the AirPod up to the nosil and turn the vacuum on. create a suction by patching up most air pockets. hold this at 15 second increments for 2-3 times per/AirPod.
2. next, take a toothpick and scrape the inside edges where a lot of ear wax, hair, and dirt builds up. Repeat this for ALL THREE holes on the AirPod (although you may think you don’t need to clean the other two holes, you do).
3. Next, take sticky tack (like, the stuff you use to hang up posters) and taking a small bit, mold the sticky tack to the inside of the hole and press down to where the sticky tack is now inside the hole. Pull upwards and repeat as many times as needed (make sure to change out your sticky tack frequently and do this for all three holes).
4. Finally, to finish this off, take a cotton swab and douse it with rubbing alcohol. Wring it out slightly and rub it all over the airpods (including inside the holes).

Now, if neither of these things work you may have broken/damaged airpods on your hands.

as shown by the image, I had the latter as my problem and this cleaning method worked really well and now my sound quality and volume is 100x better for both airpods! This is what came out of my airpods using the sticky tack, and I can only imagine what came out with the suction.

Blu-Tak (other malleable adhesive wall fixings are available) - squidge some into the main speaker port on each AirPod. It will safely remove all wax deposits from the metal mesh covering the speakers.

I kept reading that it could be a wax build up which grossly made sense so I tried the gunk squares first-but you have to be super careful bc it’s the consistency of gum so it can slightly get stuck n the mesh. Worked ok cleaning the outer areas but I think they actually pushed the wax in! Couldn’t even hear out of the right one anymore. Saw a bunch of people doing this weird sucking method...IT TOTALLY WORKED. I dabbed a q tip with hydrogen peroxide to the mesh (super carefully bc they aren’t water proof)...it breaks the wax down Then sucked til I felt air. Did it lightly once more then dabbed with a dry q tip and soft cloth. PRESTO...like new!!!!

My right airpod was lower than the left, I used n old tooth brush with a little alcohol to break up the earwax under the speaker screen and covered it with a shirt and sucked out the wax. Volume was perfect again

I had this issue to

go to general then accessibility then to the volume slider and move it a quarter to the left if the left is quiter and same for the right if that ones quiter

hope this works for you I’t did for me.

I went to Settings>General>Accessibility down to the Hearing section then I slid the setting completely to the low volume airpod (mine was the left). Volume went up so I slid it back to center and it worked like a charm.

Those folks talking about sucking on the tip, where the grill is, raises the wax enough to clean it out. You’ll have to be careful about how you do it- you need to just get your lips on the extreme end so the air comes in through the side holes and comes out that tiny grill. It’s a real pain, you’ll feel some resistance but it’ll slowly get better until air can freely move between those side holes and the main output hole. It’s hard to explain but once you get it you’ll understand what I mean. Then wipe with qtip damp but not wet by any means. Do it again and again, maybe three or four times, until it’s clean after you rub the speaker grill and you should have a fully functional AirPod again.

This should resolve any blockage. I had the same problem driving me to within days of just buying another pair until I found this thread and it’s solution works great!

I tried reset the AirPods, restarting my devices, connecting my AirPods to another device, and even sucking on the right one, but nothing worked!

So I went into Settings > Accessibility > Audio/Visual > and turned mono audio on. It made the sound even in both AirPods. Then I turned it off and it fixed it!

Sucking on the small speaker definitely fixed my problem. Another thing to clear your Airpod of earwax even more is to blow through the smaller side speaker on the outside of the bud until you feel airflow coming through the big speaker. This is a sign that the pod had been cleared of the wax that was preventing the sound from coming out. Hope this helps!

I saw these sucking posts and, well, just no. No! So I used an old Sonicare brush head on my Sonicare toothbrush, misted it with isopropyl and swiped it across the mesh a few times. Issue resolved, no gross sucking. The Sonicare also worked great on getting most of the ferrous material from around the charging case’s magnets displaced. Still needed some wiping with isopropyl but now looks like new!

Was on this post because I too had the same problem... I read about "sucking" the biggest part of the airpod then cleaning it afterwards and grossly enough it worked 😂 so definitely was possible ear wax build up. When i first "sucked" i felt resistance, did it again then felt air go through. So make sure to suck until you feel air come through. Gross again but it worked!!! Yes!!!

I had the same problem and followed what everyone else on here was doing. Sucked on them till it was unclogged and the air came through easily. Helped to wet the mesh part a little bit to loosen it up then wiped off the wax and repeated the process till it was very loud on both sides! Did it to the other louder one and it got louder too. Now they are both the same loudness and good as new