There are lots of ways to drive like a complete and utter douche bag; Teslas, for instance! Autopilot, the company’s driver assist, is an express ticket to distracted driving that has resulted in some truly Darwinian moments. Case in point: this porno that was shot while Tesla’s unfinished, almost-kind-of-self-driving software was at the wheel. Lovely. No notes. Or, wait, how about these trucks that “roll coal,” which is numbnuts code for intentionally spewing black diesel smoke everywhere? Nice! Very cool. Thanks, America.
There are subtler ways, though, like driving with wireless earbuds in, which is not only inadvisable but actually illegal in some states. While there’s obviously nothing preventing anyone from popping their wireless earbuds in and driving like that, there’s at least one UI quirk in iOS that nudges would-be distracted drivers in the right direction. When you get into a car you’ve previously connected to via Bluetooth, your phone audio will often automatically switch to the car instead of your wireless earbuds if you happened to be listening to something at the time you turned your car on.
You can obviously just switch it back and go about your asshole journey of driving with wireless earbuds in if you want to, but then at least you’re truly electing to be an unsafe driver each and every time you fire up the trusty steel battering ram. Maybe not anymore, though, thanks to iOS 26. With a new setting called “Keep Audio with Headphones,” you can make sure that even when your car’s Bluetooth is within range, your wireless earbuds (be they AirPods or others) will remain playing in your ears and not on your car speakers.
On one hand, I get it. Sometimes the audio switches when you’re not even in your vehicle if your car happens to be on, and you don’t want that very important call you’re on to be trapped inside your car, where you are not currently located. Or maybe, you’re a passenger and you want to completely f**king ignore the person who is driving. In that case, I just want to say I am sorry, I’ve been there. I promise things will get easier once you graduate high school. But, also, let’s be honest, for people who want to listen to their wireless earbuds while driving, this is a major win. Finally, less screwing around and more Rogan-esque anti-vax misinformation piped straight into the ol’ flesh desert where your mind used to be.
I know that there’s a less-than-0% chance that Apple intended to release a feature that makes distracted driving easier. If I had to imagine, engineers are probably trying to avoid the jump scare of having the audio switch to your car without asking it to, which is, at least in theory, an issue worth tackling. Or, I don’t know, maybe they actually want all of us dead after the mass criticism of Liquid Glass. Who’s to say, really?
This would normally be the point where I tell you how to activate said new feature, but, uh… don’t do that. Sure, auto-switching isn’t always going to be ideal, but sometimes the annoyance we have is better than the mass safety hazard we invented, and as tempting as tuning out all of that very annoying auditory information on the road may be, a little concentration can (despite popular opinion) actually be a good thing.
