10 Ways to Control Your Hearing Aids With the Apple Watch

Hearing Loss Blog

By Joho345 (Own work) [CC BY 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Picture being able to fine-tune the volume, treble, and bass on your hearing aids as discretely and easily as checking the time on your wrist. Or imagine fine-tuning your hearing aids for any listening situation without ever having to touch your hearing aids.

Sound too good to be true? A couple of years ago, it was; but with the Apple Watch, hearing aid users are changing the way they engage with their hearing aids.

With Apple’s most personal gadget to date, you can now leave your hearing aid remote control at home, your cell phone in your pocket, and your fingers out of your ears. All hearing aid adjustments and settings can be accessed from a software program within the watch—meaning you’ll never have to touch your hearing aids or habitually fumble through your phone again.

Here are 10 cool things you can do with your Apple Watch and compatible hearing aids.

1. Abandon the hearing aid remote control

The dilemma with contemporary hearing aids is that as they become smaller, more powerful, and armed with more features, they become harder to handle. This makes a remote control a requirement, but who wants to carry around yet another device?

Even utilizing your cell phone as the remote control can get tiring, but with the Apple Watch, if you want to modify a setting, you just raise your wrist. It can’t get any easier than that.

2. Easily adjust the volume, treble, and bass

Need the hearing aid volume adjusted? No problem, just inconspicuously raise your wrist, tap the hearing aid app on the watch, and swipe your finger to modify the volume control slider. You can also quickly fine-tune the treble and bass to produce the ideal sound quality in any hearing environment.

3. Mute your hearing aids

Scenarios arise when you don’t want to amplify sound, and with the Apple Watch, you can turn off the hearing aids with the push of a button.

Although we don’t endorse using this feature on your spouse.

4. Create and save custom sound settings

Having a discussion in a busy restaurant is very different than having a quiet conversation at home; that’s why hearing aids have what are termed “environmental presets,” or settings that amplify sounds according to the environment.

With the Apple Watch, you can conveniently access and switch between presets, adjusting settings on the fly depending on where you are. And as you make your modifications, if there is a unique setting that works especially well, you can save the setting, name it, and access it at a later time.

5. Stream music and phone calls

You’re out for a walk and you want to play your favorite music album. That would ordinarily require you to remove your hearing aids, but with Apple Watch, you can stream music wirelessly from the watch to your hearing aids. In this manner, your hearing aids have the dual function of a sound amplification device and a pair of high-quality headsets.

Additionally, you can effortlessly answer or forward phone calls right from the watch, as the audio is sent wirelessly to your hearing aids not unlike the music.

6. Find your misplaced hearing aids

We all lose important things, like our car keys, and we use up a lot of time attempting to find them. But when we misplace our hearing aids, it’s not only inconvenient—we risk harming the gadget that connects us to sound, which can be scary.

Using the Apple Watch, if you lose your hearing aids, you can immediately find them as the watch can detect their specific location and render it on a map.

7. Concentrate on speech and filter background noise

Most digital hearing aids include directional microphones and other background-noise eliminating capacities. With the Apple Watch, you have continuous access to these capabilities, with the capacity to narrow the focus in a hectic room, for example, by tuning in to the person you’re conversing with while filtering the background noise.

8. View your battery and connection status

You no longer have to worry about running out of battery power and being stranded without sound. You can conveniently keep track of your hearing aid battery life right on the Apple Watch.

9. Make your hearing aids invisible

You can’t literally make your hearing aids invisible with the Apple Watch, but with the right hearing aid, it will seem that way to the people around you. The Apple Watch, when combined with a completely-in-the-ear-canal hearing aid, will be totally out of sight. And when you’re modifying your hearing aid controls on your watch, people will think you’re checking the time.

10. Control your tinnitus

Sound therapy in the form of white noise, music, or nature sounds can be streamed wirelessly to your hearing aids, and the sounds can be altered to match up with the frequency of your tinnitus—all from the Apple Watch.

Personalize your hearing experience

Although the Apple Watch is not compatible with every type of hearing aid, a number of hearing aid models currently are, and we expect more models to be designed in the future. The Apple Watch is the perfect answer to several of the issues expressed by our patients and permits a level of interaction and control like never before.

Call us today to learn more about this extraordinary technology.

Do you own an Apple Watch? Do you use it to control your hearing aids? Let us know about your experience in a comment.

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The site information is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. To receive personalized advice or treatment, schedule an appointment.