Picture 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 imagine fine-tuning your hearing aids for any hearing environment 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 product 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 controls and settings can be easily accessed from a software program within the watch—meaning you’ll never have to touch your hearing aids or endlessly 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 problem with contemporary hearing aids is that as they become smaller, more effective, and loaded with more features, they become more difficult to handle. This makes a remote control a must, but who wants to lug around yet another device?
Even using your cell phone as the remote control can get tiring, but with the Apple Watch, if you want to change a setting, you just raise 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 lift your wrist, tap the hearing aid app on the watch, and swipe your finger to adjust the volume control slider. You can also quickly fine-tune the treble and bass to produce the ideal sound quality in any hearing situation.
3. Mute your hearing aids
Scenarios 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 functionality on your spouse.
4. Create and save custom sound settings
Having a discussion in a busy restaurant is very different than having one at home; that’s why hearing aids have what are referred to as “environmental presets,” or settings that enhance sounds according to the environment.
With the Apple Watch, you can conveniently access and change among presets, switching settings on the fly depending on your location. And as you render your modifications, if there is a particular setting that works particularly well, you can save the setting, label 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 music album. That would typically 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 regard, your hearing aids have the double function of a sound amplification device and a pair of high-quality earphones.
You can also very easily 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 important things, like our car keys, and we waste a lot of time trying to find them. But when we lose our hearing aids, it’s not only inconvenient—we risk breaking the mechanism that connects us to sound, which can be distressing.
With the Apple Watch, if you misplace your hearing aids, you can immediately find them as the watch can identify their specific location and present it on a map.
7. Concentrate on speech and block out background noise
Most digital hearing aids contain directional microphones and other background-noise eliminating functions. With the Apple Watch, you have continuous access to these capabilities, with the ability 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 stuck 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 actually make your hearing aids invisible with the Apple Watch, but with the appropriate 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 view. And when you’re changing 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 modified to correspond to the frequency of your tinnitus—all from the Apple Watch.
Personalize your hearing experience
While the Apple Watch is not compatible with all types of hearing aid, a number of hearing aid models currently are, and we anticipate more models to be produced in the near future. The Apple Watch is the ideal answer to several of the concerns expressed by our patients and enables a degree of interaction and control like never before.
Contact us today to learn more about this incredible 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.