AirPods volume drops after fast rewinding videos until manually adjusted

Platforms Mac
1

This issue is only happening with my AirPods Pro 3 (my AirPods Max work without issue from my testing), and it has been occurring since I first got them. I initially thought it was a compatibility issue that would get resolved in future updates. However, it is still happening today despite multiple Infuse and macOS updates being released over that time. It is a bit hard to explain, but the simple steps to reproduce it in my case are:

  1. Have your AirPods Pro 3 connected to your Mac.
  2. Open Infuse and play any video (in my case, through a Jellyfin connection).
  3. Use the arrow keys to fast forward or rewind the video. (This is the fastest way to replicate the issue, but if you pause your video for a while, the effect is the same. Pausing and immediately unpausing does not trigger it.)
  4. Notice how the volume drops, even though its value in macOS remains the same.
  5. Try to adjust the volume, and notice how it suddenly jumps back to the previous level.

There is no such issue on iOS or iPadOS with these AirPods. My listening mode is set with noise cancellation on, spatial awareness off, and conversation awareness off. Since it clearly only affects my MacBook, and specifically only the AirPods Pro 3, it is hard to deduce the cause. Has anyone else noticed this strange bug?

2

Update after further testing: turning off Personalized Volume in macOS under System Settings → AirPods Pro appears to have fixed the issue. I repeatedly tested seeking and pausing in Infuse, and the volume no longer drops.

This was also reproducible in Safari/Instagram, so it does not appear to be specific to Infuse. My best guess—not a confirmed root cause—is that restarting the audio stream after seeking or pausing caused the AirPods’ internal Personalized Volume state to become out of sync with macOS. That would explain why the macOS slider remained unchanged and why pressing either volume key immediately restored the correct level.

Conversation Awareness and Spatial Audio were already disabled. For reference, I tested with AirPods Pro 3 firmware 8B41 on macOS 26.5.2.

If anyone else encounters this, please try disabling Personalized Volume and let us know whether it fixes the problem. I’ll update this thread if it returns.