To easily connect AirPods to your Mac you need to download the AirBuddy application: here's how to install it and how to activate the features
If AirPods headphones are one of the most successful Apple products of recent years, the reason is also to be found in their extreme simplicity of use: Just have the Bluetooth connection activated on your iPhone, open the box that contains them and within a few seconds the AirPods are already connected to your phone.
But if we want to connect the AirPods to the Mac the thing is not so simple: after activating Bluetooth on the computer, in fact, we'll have to open the cover of the AirPods case, hold down the configuration button on the back until the light turns white flashing and then select the headphones in the list of devices detected by Bluetooth on our Mac and click Connect. Decidedly less intuitive, but now there's a much more practical alternative: AirBuddy.
How AirBuddy works
With AirBuddy, an app developed by Guilherme Rambo that we can download from the Gumroad platform with a suggested minimum donation of $5, we can almost completely replicate on macOS the experience we have on iOS when using AirPods. Once downloaded and installed the application, in fact, with Bluetooth activated just bring the headphones to our Mac and we will be offered a pop up window from which, with a single click, we can connect the AirPods to the Mac. From the same window we'll be able to check the charge status of the Apple headphones and their case and, if they are being charged via the Lightning cable, how long before the battery is full. This information can also be viewed from a widget that AirBuddy installs in the macOS notification center. Finally, after clicking on the AirBuddy window, the Mac's audio output will be automatically set to play on the AirPods while the audio input is not changed to avoid unpleasant quality loss.
AirBuddy runs on macOS Mojave (10.14) or later operating system, and requires the Mac to be compatible with the Bluetooth LE ( Bluetooth Low Energy) standard, the same one needed to make the Apple Watch work with the Mac. AirBuddy, however, is also not compatible with Apple's smart watch, Apple Pencil and Apple TV. Maybe it will be in the future while it can already communicate with iPhone and iPad showing their battery status. This app also has the advantage of being very lightweight: the file you have to download to install it weighs just 4 MB.