I’m the kind of guy who prefers to name all my Apple hardware with the product’s actual name. For example, my phone’s name is “iPhone 13 Pro,” my Apple Watch is named “Apple Watch Nike+,” my computer has the “MacBook Air” name, and so forth.

After getting AirPods and setting it up, one of the first things I do is go into Settings and rename them from “Chris’s AirPods” to 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 to the default “First Name’s AirPods” 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 reconnect to the iPhone.

It’s unclear whether that could be an iCloud issue. I’ve tried unpairing and re-pairing the earbuds, to no avail, as 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 the most recent firmware at the time of this writing.

This first-world problem only manifests 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 addresses the issue, you can simply add a trailing space to the “AirPods” name.

Before you begin, make sure your AirPods are paired with your iOS device and connected to it. For that, open iPhone Control Center, tap the AirPlay icon in the Now Playing card and select your AirPods.

Here are the steps to rename your AirPods:

1. On your iPhone or iPad, go to Settings and tap Bluetooth.
2. Locate your AirPods in the My Devices section, and tap the info icon (i) next to its current name.
3. Tap the Name field.
4. Now name your AirPods as “AirPods ” (with the trailing space) (skip the quotation marks).
5. Tap the Done key on the keyboard to save the changes.

You can also rename AirPods on your Mac. For this, open System Preferences and click Bluetooth. With the earbuds connected to the computer, right-click on their name and choose Rename. Now type “AirPods” in the field (crucially, don’t forget to append that important trailing space at the end), save the changes, and you’re good to go.

Note: If putting a space doesn’t work, you can add a dot (.)

AirPods renamed successfully

And that’s all there’s to it, folks!

Your earbuds will now keep that “AirPods” name, even if you connect and reconnect 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.

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.

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