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Stop the whining! Make Apple EarPods play nice with Xbox One

Find out the fix for the annoying whining sound you hear when you use Apple EarPods with an Xbox One controller.

Matt Elliott Senior Editor
Matt Elliott is a senior editor at CNET with a focus on laptops and streaming services. Matt has more than 20 years of experience testing and reviewing laptops. He has worked for CNET in New York and San Francisco and now lives in New Hampshire. When he's not writing about laptops, Matt likes to play and watch sports. He loves to play tennis and hates the number of streaming services he has to subscribe to in order to watch the various sports he wants to watch.
Expertise Laptops, desktops, all-in-one PCs, streaming devices, streaming platforms
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Matt Elliott

Other headphones play nice with the Xbox One, but if you have tried to use Apple EarPods with Remote and Mic with an Xbox One controller, it probably wasn't for long. Because if you plugged in a pair of Apple EarPods to a newer Xbox One controller that has a headphone jack, you were greeted by a high-pitched whining buzzing sound.

The easy solution is to simply use another set of headphones. But if you must use Apple's EarPods, then I would direct your attention to clever YouTuber Nick Robinson, who figured out a fix. And it is this:

1. Plug your Apple EarPods into your Xbox One controller.

2. Double-tap the big Xbox button on your controller to open Xbox One's left panel on your screen and scroll down to the gear icon to open the Settings menu.

3. Move the slider for Mic monitoring all the way to the left to mute it.

4. Enjoy the silence.

xbox-one-apple-earpods.jpg
Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET

Robinson suggests that in addition to adjusting the slider for Mic monitoring, you also toggle the switch to Off for Headset mic. I found, however, that just moving the slider for Mic monitoring did the trick.

Robinson also posits an interesting theory about why Apple's EarPods create this annoying buzzing sound in the first place. He explains that Apple reversed the ground and mic rings on the plug.

(Via OS X Daily.)