Leaf&Core

Anker Reveals the Dongle Apple Should Have Made: USB-C to Lightning Audio

Danielle from Leaf and Core
Reading Time: 2 minutes.

Anker USB-C to Lightning CableWhen you get a new iPhone, you’ll find a set of Lightning EarPods in the box. These will let you play music from your iPhone or iPad. However, they won’t work for you MacBook, iPad Pro, iMac, or any other Apple product. Just the consumer level iPads and the iPhone. Apple, at one point, included a Lightning to headphone adapter in the box, but never included an adapter for USB-C to Lightning. Therefore, you can’t use your Lightning EarPods with most of Apple’s lineup.

After Apple decided to remove the headphone jack, Lightning based headphones seemed like a good way to get quality audio off your iOS devices. Because it was digital only, headphone makers could bring their own digital to analog converters, greatly improving sound quality over Apple’s small DACs in the iPhone. However, Lightning headphones never took off. You just couldn’t use them with other products from Apple or even other companies.

Now you can use those headphones with any Apple products. Anker has released a $30 adapter that will allow you to plug your $30 Apple EarPods into your Mac or PC. You might even be able to use them with other USB-C devices, including the iPad Pro.

Maybe.

Actually, probably not.

The USB-C Audio Problem

I have a few USB-C to headphone jack adapters. One from HTC and one from Google. Neither will be sure to work with my work phone, a Samsung Galaxy S8. That’s because audio over USB-C is kind of a mixed bag. Audio over USB-C isn’t completely standardized, or, at least, it hasn’t been long enough. It seems every Android manufacturer has a slightly different way of sending audio over the USB-C connection.

Because USB-C didn’t have any standards when it came to audio over USB-C, mostly because they didn’t foresee a future without the headphone jack, many Android manufacturers do audio over USB-C slightly differently. As a result, my HTC adapter or headphones may not work with my Samsung device, or even an HTC-made Google Pixel.

However, your results may vary. Newer Android devices are more likely to conform to USB standards. There’s a chance this will let you use Lightning EarPods or other Lightning based headphones with Android phones.

Anker does guarantee it’ll work with Macs and Windows PCs though.

Dongle Time!

Apple doesn’t even have a dongle like this. However, at $30, it’s not hard to see why. The Lightning EarPods cost $30. Lightning EarPods aren’t the only Lightning enabled headphones, but they are the most common model. However, there are some high-end headphones. Perhaps you thought you’d never leave iOS behind, but you forgot you’d like to use your headphones with your computer. Maybe you just switched to Android, and want to gamble the $30 that this adapter will work.

I’m not sure who this is for, but, then again, I’m not sure who the headphone jack was removed for either.

Anker has released the below compatibility list, though other devices could work as well.

Maybe.

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