Just 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 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 redefining the way they engage 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 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 endlessly 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 dilemma with contemporary hearing aids is that as they come to be smaller, more powerful, and equipped with more capabilities, they become more difficult to handle. This makes a remote control a necessity, but who wants to carry 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 adjust a setting, you just lift 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 subtly lift your wrist, tap the hearing aid application on the watch, and swipe your finger to adjust the volume control slider. You can also quickly fine-tune the treble and bass to build the ideal sound quality in any hearing 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 press 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 labeled “environmental presets,” or settings that enhance sounds in accordance to the environment.
With the Apple Watch, you can effortlessly access and switch among presets, modifying settings on the fly depending on where you are. And as you render your adjustments, if there is a specific setting that works particularly 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 jog and you want to play 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 way, your hearing aids have the twin function of a sound amplification device and a set of high-quality earbuds.
Additionally, you can easily answer or forward phone calls straight from the watch, as the audio is transferred wirelessly to your hearing aids just like the music.
6. Find your missing hearing aids
We all lose valuable things, like our car keys, and we use up a lot of time trying to find them. But when we misplace our hearing aids, it’s not only inconvenient—we risk damaging the mechanism that connects us to sound, which can be distressing.
With the Apple Watch, if you misplace your hearing aids, you can promptly find them as the watch can pin point their specific location and display it on a map.
7. Concentrate on speech and filter background noise
Most digital hearing aids contain directional microphones and other background-noise eliminating capacities. With the Apple Watch, you have continuous access to these features, with the capacity to narrow the focus in a hectic room, for instance, by tuning in to the person you’re speaking with while filtering the background chatter.
8. View your battery and connection status
You no longer need to worry about running out of battery power and being stuck without sound. You can effortlessly keep tabs on 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 proper hearing aid, it will seem 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 changing your hearing aid settings on your watch, people will think you’re checking the time.
10. Manage 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 accommodate 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 expect more models to be produced in the future. The Apple Watch is the perfect answer to several of the concerns conveyed by our patients and allows for a degree of interaction and control like never before.
Contact us today to find out 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.