[Matteo Gaudioso] released MousePods, a Python tool that accesses the motion sensors in Apple AirPods on Linux, turning them into mouse input. No Apple host required. Doing this requires reversing how the devices work and communicate, because it turns out that the AirPods 3 do things differently than other models.
Head tracking with AirPods has been around for years. Apple uses the motion data for spatial audio and gesture recognition, and there are a number of open source tools to access this data. But there was always a blind spot: no one could figure out how to talk to the AirPods 3.
[Matteo] enlisted the help of Claude Code to find out what was different, and found Claude quite useful in running hundreds of probes and tests on the AirPods to finally figure out what was going on, among other things. The results are well summarized here. An interesting one is how the sensor data was indirectly hidden by the fact that on Linux the default MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) is too small to hold the entire payload complete with motion sensors. If the Linux MTU is increased to match the significantly larger iOS standard, everything appears.
There’s another feature we like: the ability to send the data to Opentrack to use as head tracking input for things like flying or racing simulators. We’ve seen this done with Flight Sims using headphones for head tracking, which is a great way to use sensor data that already exists without affecting audio functionality.
Some features are still experimental, but MousePods is confirmed to work with the Apple AirPods 3 and AirPods Pro 2. Check out the MousePods website for some more info if you want to give it a try.