I’m the kind of guy who prefers to name all my Apple hardware with the actual name of the product. For example, my phone is named “iPhone 7 Plus,” my Apple Watch Series 2 Nike+ is named “Apple Watch Nike+”, my computer has the “MacBook Air” name and so forth.
I got my Apple wireless earbuds the other day and the very first thing I did after pairing was venture into Settings and rename them from “Chris’s AirPods” into just “AirPods”. But, alas, they’d stubbornly switch back to the default name whenever I reconnected to them.
AirPods keep renaming themselves
As mentioned, my AirPods revert back to the default “FIRSTNAME’s AirPods” name every time I switch to them from my Apple TV or Mac and back to my iPhone. The same thing happens if I put them in the charging case. While my Mac and Apple TV keep the “AirPods” name, the earbuds automatically revert to “Chris’s AirPods” as soon as they re-connect to the phone.
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It’s unclear whether that could be an iCloud issue. I’ve tried unpairing and re-pairing the earbuds, to no avail—they keep renaming themselves using Apple’s default naming scheme.
Yes, all my devices have the latest OS updates installed and my AirPods are running version 3.5.3 of the firmware, the most recent firmware at the time of this writing.
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This first-world problem only manifest itself when you rename your AirPods as “AirPods”.
Give them any other name—like “My AirPods” or “Apple AirPods”, for instance—and it sticks across iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS. If you’re the type of person who cannot be bothered to rename your AirPods into anything else other than “AirPods,” we have a workaround for you.
How to rename your AirPods as “AirPods”
The inability to remember the “AirPods” name is likely a bug in the firmware that may be fixed with a future software update. Until Apple address the issue, you can simply add a trailing space to the “AirPods” name.
1) On your iOS device, go to Settings → Bluetooth.
NOTE: Be sure that your AirPods are paired with your iOS device and connected to it. On iOS, you can connect to any of your paired wireless headphones in Control Center: swipe your way to the Now Playing card and select your AirPods in the audio output menu at the bottom.
2) Locate your AirPods underneath the My Devices section, then tap the “i” icon.
3) Tap the Name field.
4) Now name your AirPods as “AirPods ” (with the trailing space).
5) Tap the Done key on the keyboard to save the changes.
Going back to the previous screen without hitting Done on the keyboard may not save the new name properly. Again, you cannot rename AirPods if they’re not paired with your phone.
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You can also rename AirPods on your Mac.
Open System Preferences and click the Bluetooth icon. With the earbuds connected to the computer, right-click them in the list and choose the Rename option from the popup menu.
Now type “AirPods ” in the field (crucially, don’t forget to append that important trailing space at the end!), click the Rename button to confirm the action and you’re good to go.
And that’s all there’s to it, folks!
Your earbuds will now keep that “AirPods ” name, even if you connect and re-connect to them from any of your iCloud-enabled devices. The old name may still appear in the menus on your devices until the changes propagate via iCloud. Don’t worry, as soon as you connect to them the “AirPods ” name shall be displayed in the menus.
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With this simple trick, you will finally be able to use the “AirPods” name for your earbuds. And because that trailing space isn’t visible in the menus, you’ll soon forget it’s there to begin with.
Related tutorials
The following how-tos on renaming Apple products should be useful, too.
It’s a wrap-up!
And that’s it, ladies and gents.
You can now rename your AirPods into “AirPods” if you don’t mind the extra space and rest assured they won’t rename themselves back to “FIRSTNAME’s AirPods”. Let us know how you liked this simple yet effective workaround by posting a comment below.