Maico Audiological ServicesJust imagine 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 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 owners are redefining 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 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 constantly 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 modern hearing aids is that as they come to be smaller, more efficient, and armed with more features, they become harder to handle. This makes a remote control a requirement, but who wants to haul around yet another device?
Even utilizing your cell phone as the remote control can get tedious, but with the Apple Watch, if you want to modify 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 subtly lift your wrist, tap the hearing aid app on the watch, and swipe your finger to modify the volume control slider. You can also quickly fine-tune the treble and bass to produce the best sound quality in any hearing scenario.
3. Mute your hearing aids
Situations 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 advocate using this functionality on your spouse.
4. Create and save custom sound settings
Having a discussion in a restaurant is very different than having one at home; that’s why hearing aids have what are known as “environmental presets,” or settings that amplify sounds with respect to the environment.
With the Apple Watch, you can effortlessly access and switch between presets, shifting settings on the fly depending on your location. And as you render your changes, if there is a unique setting that works especially 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 play your favorite music 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 regard, your hearing aids have the dual function of a sound amplification device and a set of high-quality earbuds.
You can also easily answer or forward phone calls straight from the watch, as the audio is sent wirelessly to your hearing aids not unlike the music.
6. Find your misplaced hearing aids
We all lose valuable things, like our car keys, and we waste a lot of time trying to find them. But when we misplace our hearing aids, it’s not only inconvenient—we risk ruining the device that links us to sound, which can be distressing.
With the Apple Watch, if you misplace your hearing aids, you can quickly find them as the watch can pin point their location and present it on a map.
7. Concentrate on speech and filter background noise
Most digital hearing aids include 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 noisy room, for instance, by tuning in to the person you’re conversing with while blocking the background chatter.
8. View your battery and connection status
You no longer need to worry about running out of battery power and being stranded without audio. You can conveniently monitor 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 proper 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 view. And when you’re altering your hearing aid controls on your watch, people will think you’re checking the time.
10. Regulate 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 complement the frequency of your tinnitus—all from the Apple Watch.
Personalize 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 expect more models to be produced in the near future. The Apple Watch is the ultimate remedy to several of the concerns expressed by our patients and provides a degree of interaction and control like never before.
Contact us today to find out more about this extraordinary technology.
Do you own an Apple Watch? Do you use it to control your hearing aids? Let us know about your experience in a comment.