EU iPhone Users gain ‘proximity pairing’ in iOS 26.5

Juli Clover reported earlier this week for MacRumors iPhone users in the European Union (EU) now have access to various interoperability features such as the AirPods-like pairing process, as well as notification forwarding for third-party wearables. The features were included with the advent of iOS 26.5, also released publicly this week.

“iOS 26.5 introduces several interoperability changes for third-party wearables, which means European iPhone users have access to new capabilities when using non-Apple accessories,” Clover wrote on Monday. “To comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act, Apple is letting third-party wearables access some features that have historically been limited to the Apple Watch and AirPods.”

From an accessibility standpoint, the so-called “proximity pairing” feature is most relevant in my purview. Clover describes it as “[bringing] a set of earbuds that support the feature near an iPhone will initiate an AirPods-like one-tap pairing process so third-party wearables like earbuds will no longer require multiple steps to pair.”

The multi-step process Clover refers to is having to navigate to the Bluetooth portion of Settings, find the device(s) in the list, and then tap its name to initiate a connection. In an accessibility context, that can be a lot of steps for someone to take to pair their non-Apple earbuds with their iPhone. Pointedly, it introduces a rigamarole of cognitive/motor/visual movements that adds friction to the experience; one of those is hard enough, but some combination thereof can plausibly be untenable in terms of literal strain. Part of the “magic” of AirPods is the setup flow itself, one which functions as a de-facto accessibility feature. Not only does pairing happen automatically, Apple takes it a step further by leveraging iCloud to also propagate pairing with one’s other constellation of devices in their personal Apple galaxy. As I’ve written many times before, most nerds and tech reviewers beam about this setup process as one of convenience—and they’re not wrong in saying so—but accessibleness and convenience are not one and the same. In other words, what’s convenient to you—something akin to the free breakfast at Hampton Inn, for example—may well be utterly life-changing to me in terms of enjoying AirPods. It should be obvious there exist people with disabilities in the EU who yearn for a more accessible setup procedure.

Of note, Clover writes accessory manufacturers are responsible for “[adding] support for the interoperability updates, so they may not be available right away.”

Apple introduced its AccessorySetupKit API in 2024 for third-party developers to use.