If you’re gifted AirPods or buying them secondhand, make sure the original owner is willing to help you out. To get the most out of your AirPods, you may need to reset them before you can fully use them. While this is fairly simple, you will need the help of the original owner of your AirPods.

This article explains how to factory reset AirPods Pro from a previous owner, and what happens if you don't (the instructions here apply to all recent AirPods models).

Once your AirPods Pro are set up, they're linked to the Apple ID of the person who set them up via Pairing Lock (like Activation Lock on iPhone). You can use your AirPods Pro without removing Pairing Lock, but you can't link them to your Apple ID (more on why that matters near the end of this article).

So if you keep the AirPods Pro, you'll need to reset them from the previous owner so you can set them up yourself.