In August 2024, Google announced the Pixel Buds Pro 2 with Gemini and with improved active noise cancellation.

Once the earbuds have been placed in the appropriate sockets, the cord connecting them is wound and stored in a specific manner, illustrated on the inside of the upper lid, to allow the case to close.

[17] Based on the October 2017 demonstration, early coverage compared the Pixel Buds' translation capabilities to that of the fictional Babel fish from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams;[18] however, in a review for Wired, James Temperton called the feature as released "a bit of a con", as the Pixel Buds merely provided a microphone and speaker for transcription and machine translation powered by Google Translate running on a smartphone: "to speak English to a German who then replies in German that's translated into English you will need: two Google Pixel 2 phones and two Google Pixel Buds headsets.

Long rant cut short: you don't actually need the Pixel Buds to do this, they're an entirely pointless accessory.

[11] The Pixel Buds also introduced a "fast pair" feature to Android; with a smartphone that runs Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) or higher with the Bluetooth radio active, opening the lid of the case will bring up a notification prompting the user to pair the earbuds with the phone.

[20] Reception of the Pixel Buds was mostly negative, with much of the criticism aimed towards its storage case and the awkward steps required to seat the earbuds and wind the cord properly.

[10][21][22] Google's support page tells the user to "press down to make sure the charging pins are firmly in place", despite the presence of magnets to help align and retain the Pixel Buds in their storage case.

"[23] By opening the service to more devices, researcher Matic Horvat hypothesized that Google was seeking more inputs to train its neural network for real-time, natural-language speech recognition.

[24] The second-generation Pixel Buds 2 were first announced at a Google hardware event on October 15, 2019[25] and released in the United States in April 2020.

They were released in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Singapore, Spain, and the United Kingdom in July 2020.

[32] For Google, Isabelle Olsson, Kenny Sweet, and Gina Reimann led the product design team.

[35] Reports of audio dropouts and intermittent connectivity began circulating soon after the second-generation Pixel Buds were delivered to customers, occurring most notably outdoors or when the user turned their head.

[49] Industrial design of the Pixel Buds A-Series again was led by Gina Reimann for Google, heading a team that included Dustin Lee and Jeremiah Baker.

[55] With the launch of the Pixel 8 in October 2023, Google introduced two additional colors: Bay (pastel blue) and Porcelain (light gray).

[57] Physically, the earbuds have removed the "stabilizer arc" that is used on both the second-generation and A-Series Pixel Buds; the Pro earbuds sit deeper in the wearer's cavum to overcome the Pro's increased size resulting from the larger battery and acoustic elements required for ANC.

[58] Each earbud has a silicone tip designed to slide into the user's ear canal, providing some passive noise cancellation.

They will be available starting from September 26,[65] available initially in four colors: Porcelain (off-white), Hazel (gray-green), Wintergreen (light green), and Peony (pink).