Test your hearing and use your AirPods Pro 2 as a hearing aid

Since iOS 18.1, you can use the AirPods Pro 2 to test your hearing and, if necessary, also as a hearing aid. That’s how it works.

Test your hearing with the AirPods Pro 2

Are you curious about the status of your hearing and wondering whether a hearing aid can help you? With the AirPods Pro 2, you can easily get answers to both questions since iOS 18.1. You can now test your hearing with the AirPods Pro 2 and you can also use them as a hearing aid. We’ll show you how that works.

To the hearing test To start, perform the following steps:

Make sure you are in a quiet area and follow the steps on the screen. During the test, ‘Do not disturb’ mode is automatically switched on. The test takes about five minutes per ear.

You will hear increasingly softer beeps of different frequencies. Each time you hear a beep, tap the button on the screen.

Result of the hearing test

If your hearing is good, the text ‘Your test indicates that there is little to no hearing loss’ will appear. In that case you don’t have to do anything. Above that you will see two numbers, in this case 17 dBHL and 16 dBHL, which stands for decibel Hearing Level. It varies per country at what hearing loss someone is considered hearing impaired or deaf. In the Netherlands, 0 – 30 dB loss is considered normal to mildly hearing impaired.

A graph, or audiogram, is also made of your hearing test. You can always find this again in the Health app. To do this, tap ‘Hearing test results’ at the bottom right of the ‘Data’ tab. If you have taken multiple hearing tests, you will find all the results here.

AirPods Pro 2 as a hearing aid

You can also use your AirPods Pro 2 as a hearing aid. To do this, you need to enable the feature in Settings:

• Put the AirPods Pro 2 in your ears;
• Open the Settings app on your iPhone;
• Tap ‘AirPods Pro’ [naam]’;
• Tap ‘Hearing Assistance’;
• Make sure ‘Hearing Aid’ is turned on.

Add ‘Hear’ to the Control Center

Furthermore, make sure that the ‘Hear’ control is in the Control Panel. This is probably already the case, but otherwise you can adjust it as follows:

• Open Control Center (swipe down from the top right of the screen);
• Look for the ‘Hearing’ control (ear icon);
• If you don’t see it, tap the plus sign at the top left;
• Tap ‘Add a controller’;
• Type “Hear” in the search bar and tap the corresponding icon.

Use hearing assistance

You are now ready to use your AirPods Pro 2 as a hearing aid. To do this, follow the steps below:

• Put the AirPods Pro 2 in your ears;
• Open the Control Center (swipe down from the top right of your screen);
• Tap Hearing, then tap Hearing Assistance.

You will now see a panel with settings that you can adjust as desired. The function does work, but we regularly encountered some problems. Sometimes the ‘Hearing Aid’ option in the Settings was suddenly disabled. Apple will probably improve some things with a next software update.

Listen live

The ‘Listen Live’ function can sometimes also help you understand people better. Especially when you have difficulty following a conversation in a noisy room. This is not a new feature, but it can be very effective in some cases. The function is located just below the ‘Hearing Assistance’ option.

If you want to switch these functions off again, you can do so in exactly the same way: simply tap ‘Hearing assistance’ or ‘Listen live’ again. And then close the Control Panel.

Buy AirPods Pro 2

Do you want to try out these useful functions, but you don’t have AirPods Pro 2 yet? Then check out the deals below to ensure you don’t pay too much!