Peter Clark

The microphone on my Airpod Maxes sucks. I am not sure if its my headphones being fairly old and used daily for over 1,000 days, or if the microphone is just bad.

The issue is that every time I put my headphones on, the audio input changes to be the Maxes. There is no way to override this behaviour in Mac OS X.

I figured this would be an easy Apple Shortcuts shortcut but it turns out Shortcuts does not support devices being connected as an input. Fortunately, Shortcuts has a huge eco-system of apps that can contribute inputs.

Enter Shortery.

I was able to create a shortcut in Shortery that triggers when my Maxes are connected.

It turns out Apple Shortcuts also doesn't have controls over audio inputs/outputs. However, there is a brew script that can provide this — SwitchAudio.

I then wrote a terminal script that switches the audio:

#!/bin/zsh

# Capture the output of the command
output=$(/opt/homebrew/bin/SwitchAudioSource -a)

# Check if "Sutdio Display" is attached
if echo "$output" | grep -q "Studio Display Microphone"; then
    # Run the "x" command if "blah" is found
   /opt/homebrew/bin/SwitchAudioSource -t input -s 'Studio Display Microphone'
else
    # If not attached, use the Macbook mic
  /opt/homebrew/bin/SwitchAudioSource -t input -s 'MacBook Pro Microphone
fi

I then trigger this shell script via Shortcuts. Essentially, when my Airpod Maxes are connected:

• Switch audio input to my Monitor (if monitor connected)

• Switch audio input to my MacBook Pro (if no monitor connected)

Simple, here is the Shortery automation:

and here is the Shortcuts automation: