iPhone 18 and AirPods 5 launch with Bluetooth 6 and, again, no Auracast

Apple launched the iPhone 18 and AirPods 5 on 9 September. Both have Bluetooth 6 radios. Neither can send, find or join an Auracast broadcast, and iOS 27, which ships with them, does not expose LE Audio at all.

What is confirmed

• iOS 26 and iOS 27 have no LE Audio and no Auracast. Developers who dug through the betas found nothing.
• WWDC in June brought new captioning and hearing accessibility features and no mention of broadcast audio.
• Apple's May 2026 accessibility preview, the usual venue for hearing announcements, skipped it.
• AirPods Pro's hearing-aid mode (February 2025) and AirPods' audio sharing are Apple-proprietary. Neither works with an Auracast transmitter.
• The Apple Watch Series 12 has nothing either.

What is not confirmed

Any plan. Apple does not comment, and the Bluetooth SIG, of which Apple is a board member, does not comment on members. The rumour cycle points to 2027 the way it pointed to 2026.

What it means in practice

An iPhone owner cannot point a pair of Galaxy Buds, Sony earbuds or Bose headphones at a broadcast, because the iPhone cannot act as the assistant. Hearing-aid wearers are better off: ReSound, Jabra, Beltone, Oticon, Philips, Starkey, Bernafon and Phonak build the assistant into their iPhone apps, and a free third-party app, HearAura, arrived in October. Avantree's Aura C dongle, on pre-order, does the same job in hardware.

The practical advice has not changed since 2024. If Auracast matters to you and you are choosing a phone, the Android list is long. If you are staying on an iPhone, buy hearing aids with an assistant app, or a receiver that finds broadcasts itself.

We will update the iPhone entry the day anything changes.