AirPods that connect to a turntable and offer custom sound-mixing using a touchscreen case? Apple’s thinking about it, but don’t expect it on AirPods Pro 3

• Patent describes AirPods case as a wireless audio transmitter
• Touchscreen with both finger and Apple Pencil input
• Sound-mixing and control options also included

As the famous tagline put it, Apple likes to Think Different – and its most different thinking tends to pop up in patents, like this new one for the ultimate AirPods case, spotted by Patently Apple.

Apple has been filing interesting AirPods patents for ages, and as Patently Apple notes, it filed one design featuring a touchscreen display back in 2023. And now there's a newly published patent application that takes the idea much further.

What's in the latest Apple AirPods patent?

The newly published patent describes the AirPods case as a hub for wearable audio devices, with a large square touchscreen on the front. That screen is shown with a four-icon grid, a Now Playing screen, and a photo wallpaper. But it's the next image that's really interesting, because it's got a turntable in it.

In the images supplied in the application, the AirPods case is shown connected via a cable to a turntable and then broadcasting the audio from the case to the AirPods. It's also shown accepting handwriting or Apple Pencil input on the touchscreen.

There's more: the patent also describes two cases being tapped or pushed together in order to initiate audio sharing or syncing. And it details the use of multiple audio sources playing simultaneously into one set of earbuds, and being able to use the AirPods case to adjust the relative volumes of each input, which sounds like a really cool addition.

We've seen some of this before: for example, Bowers & Wilkins' Pi8 earbuds can have their case connected to wired audio sources to transmit over to the earbuds, and do it in aptX Adaptive quality. And we've seen earbuds such as LG's Live Beam 3 do the touchscreen case thing too.

But what's set out in Apple's patent looks like it could be more elegant, which of course is typically Apple, and even more ambitious in some ways.

The bad news is that after decades of Apple patent watching, I know from experience that what's in a patent doesn't always end up in the Apple Store, and if it does it rarely arrives as soon as we'd like: personally I'm still waiting for the touchscreen MacBook that always seems to be just a few more years away.

While none of the tech described in this patent is particularly outlandish or out-there, I still wouldn't expect to see any of this in the AirPods Pro 3 – but I think it's a pretty good indication of where Apple sees at least some AirPods going in the not-too-distant future.

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