Imagine being able to regulate the volume, treble, and bass on your hearing aids as discretely and effortlessly as checking the time on your wrist. Or picture fine-tuning your hearing aids for any hearing environment 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 owners are changing the way they interact with their hearing aids.
With Apple’s most personal gadget to date, you can now leave behind your hearing aid remote control at home, your cell phone in your pocket, and your fingers out of your ears. All hearing aid controls and settings can be easily accessed from an application within the watch—meaning you’ll never have to touch your hearing aids or constantly fumble through your cell phone again.
Here are 10 cool things you can do with your Apple Watch and compatible hearing aids.
1. Ditch the hearing aid remote control
The problem with modern hearing aids is that as they become smaller, more effective, and furnished with more capabilities, they become more difficult to handle. This makes a remote control a must, but who wants to haul 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 adjust a setting, you just lift your wrist. It can’t get any easier than that.
2. Effortlessly adjust the volume, treble, and bass
Need the hearing aid volume adjusted? No problem, just discreetly lift your wrist, tap the hearing aid app on the watch, and swipe your finger to adjust the volume control slider. You can also easily fine-tune the treble and bass to build the best sound quality in any hearing scenario.
3. Mute your hearing aids
Circumstances occur 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 conversation in a 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 enhance sounds with respect to the environment.
With the Apple Watch, you can effortlessly access and change among presets, adjusting settings on the fly depending on your location. And as you render your modifications, if there is a specific setting that works especially well, you can save the setting, name it, and access it in the future.
5. Stream music and phone calls
You’re out for a run and you want to listen to your favorite album. That would typically call for you to remove your hearing aids, but with Apple Watch, you can stream music wirelessly from the watch to your hearing aids. In this way, your hearing aids have the twin function of a sound amplification device and a set of high-quality headsets.
You can also easily answer or forward phone calls straight from the watch, as the audio is transmitted wirelessly to your hearing aids just like the music.
6. Find your misplaced hearing aids
We all lose important things, like our car keys, and we waste a great deal of time attempting to find them. But when we lose our hearing aids, it’s not only inconvenient—we risk harming the device that connects us to sound, which can be distressing.
With the Apple Watch, if you misplace your hearing aids, you can swiftly track them down as the watch can identify their specific location and display it on a map.
7. Focus on speech and filter background noise
Most digital hearing aids feature directional microphones and other background-noise eliminating capacities. With the Apple Watch, you have access to these capabilities on the fly, with the ability to narrow the focus in a busy room, for instance, by listening to the person you’re talking to while filtering the background chatter.
8. View your battery and connection status
You no longer have to worry about running out of battery power and being stranded without audio. You can readily keep tabs on 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 appropriate hearing aid, it will look that way to the people around you. The Apple Watch, in combination with a completely-in-the-ear-canal hearing aid, will be fully out of view. And when you’re adjusting your hearing aid settings on your watch, people will think you’re checking the time.
10. Control your tinnitus
Sound therapy in the form of music, white noise, or nature sounds can be streamed wirelessly to your hearing aids, and the sounds can be adjusted to fit the frequency of your tinnitus—all from the Apple Watch.
Tailor 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 made in the near future. The Apple Watch is the perfect answer to many of the issues conveyed by our patients and provides for a degree of interaction and control like never before.
Contact us today to learn more about this incredible technology.
Do you own an Apple Watch? Do you use it to control your hearing aids? Tell us about your experience in a comment.