Originally Posted by
Tartarus Hey Siri does work when you have your AirPods in, but you have to make sure the iPhone microphone is able to hear your voice. The microphones on the AirPods are idle, unless you're in a call or using an app that that records your voice.
This. I was having the same issues with mine as well. You had to tap them to access Siri with that setting too, so it makes sense you'd have to do the same when you have Play/Pause enabled. I wish the AirPods would work for this like the phone does, particularly since there's a setting for "Automatic" on the Microphone setting for the AirPods.