How to change your music while skiing — without taking your gloves off

You are halfway down a run, the wrong song comes on, and you have three bad options: ride it out, stop and take a glove off, or fumble at your pocket with a mitten and hope.

Everyone who rides with music has had this moment. Here is an honest look at every way to solve it, and where each one actually falls down.

1. Take your gloves off

Low tech, high risk. It works but it costs you cold hands, an interrupted run, and a real risk of dropping a glove or a phone into deep snow or from a chairlift. On a cold day it is genuinely painful. On a powder day it is a major distraction.

2. Helmet insert headphones

Speaker pads that sit in the ear pockets of your helmet. They sound decent and they let you hear the mountain around you.

Main Issues: They can become inaudible in high winds or when riding fast. The buttons cover the basics at best, and finding the right one on the side of your helmet mid-run is guesswork — repeated pressing at your head is its own interruption.

3. Big-button Bluetooth remotes

Puck-shaped remotes with oversized buttons, designed to be pressed with a glove on. They usually strap to a glove, a pole, or a jacket strap.

Main Issues: You have to find the button by feel, which means looking down or guessing. The ones we've seen are not very stylish. The category has also aged badly — several of the most-known options are years old and barely supported now.

4. Voice assistants

If you already wear headphones, you can ask Siri or Google to change the track without touching anything.

Main Issues: Wind. Voice recognition struggles at speed with air rushing past a microphone, and it needs a connection that is often patchy on the mountain. It is also slow — a spoken command takes several seconds where a gesture takes less than one. And you have to be willing to talk to yourself around the mountain.

5. Gesture control

Instead of finding a button, you move. A wrist-worn sensor reads the movement and turns it into a command, so a flick of the wrist changes the song and your hand never leaves your pole.

This is the approach we took with Maestro. It is a wristband that comfortably fits under your ski gear. A flick left or right skips a track, a flick up or down changes volume, a tap plays or pauses, and a double tap sends a voice message to the people you are riding with. Nothing to find, nothing to look at, gloves stay on.

Where it falls down: It is another device to charge, and gesture control asks you to learn a small set of movements rather than press a labelled button. It is also new — shipping winter 2026/27.

So which one should you get?

You do not mind stopping to change the music and don't hit fast speeds — helmet drop-in speakers or bone-conduction headphones. Solves half the problem, and at mellow speeds the audio holds up.
You want a physical button and do not mind looking for it — a big-button Bluetooth remote. Check when it was last updated before you buy.
You want to change music without stopping, looking down, or removing a glove — gesture control is the only option that does all three at once.

Get Maestro first

Maestro is a wrist-worn gesture controller for hands-free music and voice chat on the mountain, launching winter 2026/27. Join the waitlist for 15% off your first order and early access at launch.