Imagine being able to manipulate the volume, treble, and bass on your hearing aids as discretely and easily as checking the time on your wrist. Or picture fine-tuning your hearing aids for any hearing situation without ever having to touch your hearing aids.
Sound too good to be true? A few 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 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 easily accessed from a software program within the watch—meaning you’ll never have to touch your hearing aids or habitually fumble through your cell 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 modern hearing aids is that as they come to be smaller, more efficient, and loaded with more capabilities, they become harder to handle. This makes a remote control a necessity, but who wants to lug around yet another device?
Even using your cell phone as the remote control can get monotonous, but with the Apple Watch, if you want to change a setting, you just raise 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 subtly 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 ideal sound quality in any listening environment.
3. Mute your hearing aids
Situations 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 recommend 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 referred to as “environmental presets,” or settings that amplify sounds in accordance to the environment.
With the Apple Watch, you can easily access and switch among presets, switching settings on the fly depending on where you are. And as you make your changes, if there is a particular 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 jog and you want to listen to your favorite album. That would generally call for you to take out 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 double function of a sound amplification device and a pair of high-quality earbuds.
Additionally, you can effortlessly answer or forward phone calls right from the watch, as the audio is directed wirelessly to your hearing aids not unlike the music.
6. Find your missing hearing aids
We all lose valuable things, like our car keys, and we waste a great deal of time trying to find them. But when we misplace our hearing aids, it’s not only inconvenient—we risk breaking the mechanism that links us to sound, which can be scary.
With the Apple Watch, if you lose your hearing aids, you can speedily track them down as the watch can pin point their location and render it on a map.
7. Focus on speech and filter out background noise
Most digital hearing aids feature directional microphones and other background-noise canceling functions. With the Apple Watch, you have continuous access to these features, with the ability to narrow the focus in a hectic room, for example, by tuning in to the person you’re talking to while filtering the background noise.
8. View your battery and connection status
You no longer need to stress about running out of battery power and being stuck without audio. You can effortlessly track your hearing aid battery life directly 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 look that way to the people around you. The Apple Watch, along with a completely-in-the-ear-canal hearing aid, will be totally out of sight. And when you’re modifying 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 white noise, music, 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.
Customize your hearing experience
Although the Apple Watch is not compatible with all types of hearing aid, several hearing aid models currently are, and we anticipate more models to be produced in the near future. The Apple Watch is the ideal remedy to many of the concerns conveyed by our patients and allows for a level of interaction and control like never before.
Call 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.