Picture being able to fine-tune 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 few 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 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 modifications and settings can be 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. Ditch the hearing aid remote control
The problem 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 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 discreetly 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 produce the ideal sound quality in any hearing environment.
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 push of a button.
Although we don’t encourage using this functionality on your spouse.
4. Create and save custom sound settings
Having a conversation 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 enhance sounds in accordance to the environment.
With the Apple Watch, you can effortlessly access and change among presets, modifying settings on the fly depending on your location. And as you render your adjustments, if there is a specific setting that works particularly well, you can save the setting, label it, and access it at a later time.
5. Stream music and phone calls
You’re out for a jog and you want to listen to your favorite album. That would generally require 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 purpose of a sound amplification device and a set of high-quality headsets.
Additionally, you can very easily answer or forward phone calls straight from the watch, as the audio is transferred 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 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 ruining the mechanism that links us to sound, which can be scary.
With the Apple Watch, if you lose your hearing aids, you can swiftly track them down as the watch can pin point their specific location and display it on a map.
7. Concentrate on speech and filter out background noise
Most digital hearing aids contain directional microphones and other background-noise eliminating functionality. With the Apple Watch, you have access to these capabilities on the fly, with the ability to narrow the focus in a hectic room, for instance, by tuning in to the person you’re conversing with while blocking 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 sound. You can effortlessly track your hearing aid battery life directly 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 right hearing aid, it will seem 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 view. And when you’re changing your hearing aid controls 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 correspond to 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, several hearing aid models currently are, and we anticipate more models to be made in the near future. The Apple Watch is the ultimate remedy to several of the issues 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 extraordinary 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.