The upcoming AirPods Pro 3 earbuds are said to bring a redesigned charging case that should shrink in size and lose a dedicated Bluetooth pairing button.
Asher Dipprey, who is a 3D artist at Front Page Tech, has shared on his X (Twitter) account that the next AirPods Pro will bring design tweaks to make them more in line with the AirPods 4. He wrote that the charging case size will “decrease slightly.” Also, Apple will allegedly remove a physiacl pairing button from the AirPods Pro 3’s charging case. Instead, you can tap on the case itself to enter pairing mode.
Leaker Majin Bu has corroborated Dipprey’s findings. Based on information obtained “from a well-known accessory manufacturer,” Bu added that the AirPods Pro 3’s charging case will also retain support for the lanyard.
AirPods Pro 3 charging may lose the pairing button
This sounds a lot like a design change Apple brought with the AirPods 4, released in September 2024. The AirPods 4 lack a traditional physical pairing button and instead embed a hidden touch-sensitive area on the front. To activate pairing mode on the AirPods 4, you just double-tap the front of the case.
The fact that the AirPods Pro 3 will have a slightly smaller charging case indicates that the earbuds themselves will probably shrink in size. Earlier this year, a leaked image (below) of what appeared to be the next AirPods Pro depicted changes like shorter stems and a bigger in-ear portion.
If true, this makes a lot of sense. Design differences between the regular AirPods and the AirPods Pro line never felt justified to me. Why engineer two sets of visually slightly different earbuds and charging cases when you could streamline these designs across AirPods products?
Other rumored AirPods Pro 3 features
Provided this rumor is true, it sounds like the next AirPods Pro and the regular AirPods may look more uniform. Earlier this year, Mark Gurman reported on Bloomberg that the AirPods Pro 3 will bring “a new design” along with upgraded noise cancellation that will be “much better” than the existing feature on the AirPods Pro 3 and a new Apple H3 headphone chip that will enable new computational audio capabilities.
Gurman also said earlier that Apple is working on health tracking features for future AirPods models, including in-ear heart rate monitoring and temperature sensing, and new sensors powering “a slew of physiological measures.” It’s unclear if any of those health features will make the cut for the AirPods Pro 3.
It’s been three years since Apple updated the AirPods Pro, but the wait should soon be over; Apple is expected to release the AirPods Pro 3 alongside the iPhone 17 lineup in September.