How to reduce latency with Samsung Galaxy Buds on macOS

rocks under milky way galaxy

I use Samsung Galaxy Buds as my primary headphones. They’re great. Sometimes, though, I notice that audio coming from my Mac is delayed by ~1 second compared to the video.

After a bit of digging, I’ve discovered that macOS defaults to using the SBC codec, which does some buffering that can lead to that delay. Switching to the AAC codec (or fiddling with SBC settings) can eliminate that delay.

The magic incantation:

sudo defaults write bluetoothaudiod "Enable AAC codec" -bool true

Reconnect your headset, and the delay is unnoticeable.