I recently got a new ASUS Chromebook Flip C101 and the first thing, I wanted to check was, do Airpods work with Chromebooks? After all, it did connect to my PS4. Turns out, Airpods do work with Chromebooks. The paring process is fairly simple, but the experience is not that seamless. We’ll come to that later on. First, let’s check out the paring process.
Connect AirPods to Chromebook
Open up your Chromebook and click on the Menu option at the bottom right corner of your screen.
A new popup will appear showing the Settings, Time, Wi-Fi icon, and Bluetooth, etc. Turn ON Bluetooth if it’s not already ON, by clicking on it. Next Click on the small arrow pointing down next to the Bluetooth option when the menu pops up
Now, you need to put the Airpods in the pairing mode. To do so, put the Airpods back in the charging case and press and hold the Pair button on the back of the AirPods case. Open the lid on your Airpods charging case and you’ll notice the LED light on your AirPods case is blinking white, this indicates your Airpods is in the pairing mode.
Bring the Airpods close to your Chromebook and you should see Airpods available in the Bluetooth devices list. Click on the ‘Airpods’ in the Bluetooth list to pair it. You will notice the blinking light on the charging case will turn green to indicate that airpods have now paired with Chromebook.
You can use the volume button on your keyboard to adjust the volume on your Airpods. Once done, you can disconnect your Airpods by turning off your Chromebook’s Bluetooth connection or from the Bluetooth settings.
My experience so far
It works for the most part, but the connection is not smooth, the range is terrible and there is a lot of lag.
I usually get around 20 -30 feet range when I paired my Airpods with Android or Mac, but with Chromebook, the range was not even 5 feet.
Moreover, the double-tap feature on Airpods doesn’t work, neither does the video pause after taking one Airpod out, as we do in Macbook, but that’s wasn’t so disappointing. What really disappointed me is the lag. In my case, the left Airpod had a few second delays compared to the right one, I played a new video or a game. While I was able to easily fix it by taking it out and putting it back in the charger and back in my ear. But it’s still a drag.
Chromebooks are known for their bad Bluetooth support, so to find out if the issue is with Airpods or Chromebook, I tested it with another Truely Wirelly earbuds. And surprising, it worked fine with Chromebook with occasional hiccups. I guess, the problem is only with the Airpods and Chromebook.
Few guides on the Internet suggests, turning on the new “newblue” Chome flag to fix the Bluetooth issues on Chromebook, but that didn’t work for me either.
Overall, Airpods works with Chromebook, but it’s not the best experience, even Android works better with Airpods than Chromebook. Is it just me or you are facing such problems as well, let me know in the comments
Read: Best Airpods Apps for Android to Get iPhone Like Experience
