Picture 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 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 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 device 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 modifications and settings can be accessed from an application within the watch—meaning you’ll never have to touch your hearing aids or constantly fumble through your phone again.
Here are 10 cool things you can do with your Apple Watch and compatible hearing aids.
1. Forget the hearing aid remote control
The dilemma with modern hearing aids is that as they come to be smaller, more effective, and equipped with more features, they become harder to handle. This makes a remote control a necessity, but who wants to haul around yet another device?
Even utilizing your cell phone as the remote control can get monotonous, but with the Apple Watch, if you want to alter a setting, you just lift your wrist. It can’t get any simpler than that.
2. Effortlessly adjust the volume, treble, and bass
Need the hearing aid volume adjusted? No problem, just discreetly raise your wrist, tap the hearing aid application on the watch, and swipe your finger to modify the volume control slider. You can also easily fine-tune the treble and bass to create the best sound quality in any hearing scenario.
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 press of a button.
Although we don’t recommend using this functionality 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 labeled “environmental presets,” or settings that enhance sounds with respect to the environment.
With the Apple Watch, you can effortlessly access and change among presets, changing settings on the fly depending on where you are. And as you make your changes, if there is a specific setting that works particularly well, you can save the setting, name it, and access it later.
5. Stream music and phone calls
You’re out for a run and you want to play your favorite album. That would in general 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 regard, your hearing aids have the dual purpose of a sound amplification device and a pair of high-quality headsets.
You can also very easily answer or forward phone calls right from the watch, as the audio is directed wirelessly to your hearing aids just like the music.
6. Find your missing hearing aids
We all lose important things, like our car keys, and we use up a great deal of time attempting to find them. But when we misplace our hearing aids, it’s not only inconvenient—we risk damaging the device that connects us to sound, which can be distressing.
Using the Apple Watch, if you misplace your hearing aids, you can quickly track them down as the watch can identify their specific location and display it on a map.
7. Concentrate on speech and filter out background noise
Most digital hearing aids come with directional microphones and other background-noise eliminating capabilities. With the Apple Watch, you have access to these features 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 blocking the background chatter.
8. View your battery and connection status
You no longer have to worry about running out of battery power and being stuck without sound. You can effortlessly observe 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 appear that way to the people around you. The Apple Watch, in combination with a completely-in-the-ear-canal hearing aid, will be entirely out of view. And when you’re adjusting your hearing aid settings on your watch, people will think you’re checking the time.
10. Regulate 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 modified 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, a number of hearing aid models currently are, and we anticipate additional models to be designed in the future. The Apple Watch is the ultimate answer to several of the problems conveyed by our patients and provides for a level of interaction and control like never before.
Give us a call today to learn more about this phenomenal technology.
Do you have an Apple Watch? Do you use it to control your hearing aids? Let us know about your experience in a comment.