Hearing loss is common, and there’s a good chance it will impact you or someone close to you in your lifetime. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 13 percent of adults in the US have some difficulty hearing, and it’s a growing problem around the globe. The World Health Organization predicts that 1 in 4 people will have some degree of hearing loss by 2050.
Whether you struggle to hear the doorbell or follow conversations in noisy environments or you frequently find yourself cranking the TV volume up, you likely have a device in your pocket that can help. We often think of accessibility features for folks with profound hearing loss, but the truth is many of us can benefit.
Below, I’ve pooled together several smartphone features I tested with the help of family members that have varying degrees of hearing loss. I also spoke to Apple and Google to learn more about these features in iPhones and Android. Both companies claim they work with deaf and hard-of-hearing communities to gather feedback and new ideas.
- Ways to Prevent Hearing Loss
- How to Use Real-Time Captions on Your Phone
- How to Use Live Transcriptions on Your Phone
- How to Make Your Phone Listen for You
- How to Filter Sounds With Your Headphones
- How to Use Hearing Aids With Your Phone
- Why Some Android Accessibility Features Are Baked Into Pixels
There are many causes of hearing loss, but a major one we can all act to avoid is sustained exposure to loud noise (85 decibels or higher). Hearing loss is often incurable, and hearing damage can leave you with permanent conditions like tinnitus (usually perceived as a ringing in the ears), so it is vital to protect your hearing in loud environments.
It can be difficult for us to accurately judge volume levels, so why not have your phone or smartwatch do it for you? Start by setting a maximum limit on your phone’s volume. We have instructions here on how to do this for iPhones and Android devices.
Apple has a couple of built-in features to help you track volume. If you connect headphones or earbuds to your iPhone or iPad, go to Settings > Control Center > Hearing. When you next connect your headphones and play audio, you can open the Control Center and tap the ear icon to see the decibel level. If your headphones have a microphone, you can also turn Live Listen on to measure the noise level of your surroundings.
Own an Apple Watch? Open the Apple Watch app on your iPhone, tap the My Watch tab, then tap Noise > Noise Threshold. You will see the WHO guidelines on exposure and can set a decibel level so your Apple Watch alerts you when the average sound level hits or exceeds that threshold for three minutes. You can review headphone audio and environmental sound levels for the past year in the Health app on your iPhone, under Hearing on the Browse tab.
Android lacks built-in volume measurement, but you can use a free app, such as Sound Meter, to measure the noise around you in decibels (although the accuracy will depend on the quality of microphones in your device).
To reduce your risk in noisy environments, such as concerts, you should wear hearing protection. Check out our Best Earplugs guide for some ideas.
Google introduced Live Caption in 2019, and the feature can automatically caption videos and spoken audio on your device in real time without a Wi-Fi or cellular connection (everything happens on-device). To use it on any device running Android 10 or later, go to Settings > Accessibility > Live Caption. You can check which Android version you have by heading to Settings > About phone > Android version.
You can also use Live Caption in Google’s Chrome browser. Click on More (three vertical dots) > Settings > Accessibility, and toggle on Live Caption.
If you have a Pixel 2 or newer Pixel phone, you can use Live Caption for Calls, although it only works for English at the moment. This is part of Live Caption on supported devices, so you’ll be asked if you want to use it every time you make or take a call when Live Caption is toggled on, but you can go to Settings > Accessibility > Live Caption > Caption calls to turn it on or off.
For folks with a Pixel 6 or 6 Pro (9/10, WIRED Recommends), there’s an extra option if you go to Settings > Accessibility > Live Caption > Type responses during calls. This lets you type responses that can be read aloud to your caller. You can also select the voice you want to use for these typed responses.
Apple lacks a live-captioning system, but it has announced that a new Live Captions feature is coming to iPhone, iPad, and Mac later this year. It will work with streaming video, FaceTime calls, video-conferencing apps, and even in-person conversations. It’ll be compatible with iPhone 11 and later when you install iOS 16, iPad models with A12 Bionic and later, and Macs with Apple silicon, but it will only support English initially. Until it arrives, you can go to Settings > Accessibility > Subtitles & Captioning to turn on Closed Captions + SDH (subtitles for the deaf or hard of hearing).
Released in 2019, the Live Transcribe & notification app for Android converts speech to text in real time on your phone screen and supports more than 80 languages. You can also use it to type responses. Any phone running Android 6.0 and up can install and use the app, but functionality is baked-in on Google’s Pixel phones, where you can access it via Settings > Accessibility > Live Transcribe. You can toggle on a shortcut for quick access.
The app was inspired by Dimitri Kanevsky, a research scientist at Google who has been deaf since early childhood, and it was developed with feedback from Gallaudet University. Live Transcribe is a customizable tool. You can save transcriptions for future reference, add custom words and phrases, and even configure your phone to vibrate when someone says your name or when conversation resumes after a lull.
Apple does not currently have an equivalent feature, though it looks like the forthcoming Live Captions will be capable of transcribing conversations. Until Live Captions arrives, there are a few iOS apps that may be useful for iPhone owners, such as Group Transcribe from Microsoft.
If you find that you miss visitors at your door because you don’t hear the doorbell or a knock, or you worry about not hearing a smoke alarm, your smartphone can listen for you.
Apple has a feature called Sound Recognition that you can find in Settings > Accessibility. It enables your iPhone to listen for various sounds (fire or smoke alarms, cats or dogs, doorbells, knocking, glass breaking, a baby crying, and more). You may also want to dip into Settings > Accessibility > Audio/Visual to toggle on LED Flash for Alerts.
Google offers a similar feature within the Live Transcribe & notification app. It is built-in on Pixel phones, but you will need to download and install the app on most other Android devices. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Sound Notifications and tap Open Sound Notifications. Tap the cog at the top right for Settings, and you can select sounds and set Notification preferences (including illuminating the phone’s flash to alert you).
Whether you use wireless earbuds or wireless headphones, you can potentially get your smartphone to help you filter and amplify sound.
The Sound Amplifier app for Android lets you reduce noise, amplify quiet sounds, and boost high or low frequencies, and you can apply different settings to each ear. It requires headphones, and you can use the feature when watching videos or other media on your phone.
If you have a Pixel phone (Pixel 3 or later), you can also use Conversation Mode with headphones. By pointing your phone’s camera at the person you want to chat with, or reversing the camera and having them hold your phone, you can reduce background noise and focus on your conversation partner more easily (this feature is for bustling environments like cafés where background noise can be a problem).
Any iPhone owners with supported Apple or Beats headphones can adjust the sound to suit their hearing and improve the clarity of music, movies, phone calls, and podcasts. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Audio/Visual, turn on Headphone Accommodations, then tap Custom Audio Setup. If you go to Settings > Control Center and add Hearing, you can also use Live Listen to hear folks better by placing your iPhone microphone close to them.
If you have the AirPods Pro or AirPods Max, you can use Transparency Mode. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Audio/Visual > Headphone Accommodations > Transparency Mode, and then turn on Custom Transparency Mode and Ambient Noise Reduction to choose how much ambient noise to allow.
With the AirPods Pro (8/10, WIRED Recommends) you can also use Conversation Boost, which you can find under Transparency Mode. The feature amplifies voices, but it does mean wearing your AirPods during in-person chats. Once you have activated it and added Hearing to the Control Center via Settings, you can turn it on by opening Control Center and tweaking amplification, balance, tone, and ambient noise with a set of sliders (it will remember your preferences).
Apple has a Made for iPhone (MFi) hearing aid program. Connect supported hearing aids to an iPhone via Bluetooth, and you can access most of the features we outlined above for headphones on your hearing aid. For example, go to Settings > Accessibility, select Hearing Devices and choose yours, and then Start Live Listen to use your iPhone microphone to hear people more clearly. You can also stream music or podcasts directly to your hearing aids.
MFi hearing devices usually have additional settings (it depends on the manufacturer) and can be configured from Control Center (with Hearing added) or through the Accessibility shortcut, which you can turn on and configure in Settings > Accessibility > Accessibility Shortcut.
To use hearing aids with Android phones, pair them like any other Bluetooth device, though additional features vary by phone manufacturer. Look for Hearing Aid Compatibility (HAC) to see what your phone supports. For example, here is the Google Pixel hearing aid compatibility page. Some hearing aids can now stream music and podcasts directly to hearing aids from Android phones, but it’s wise to check compatibility before you buy.
You may be wondering why some hearing accessibility features are baked into Google’s Pixel phones but offered as separate apps for other Android devices. Angana Ghosh, director of Product Management for Input and Accessibility at Google, says this allows the accessibility team to try new things on Pixel, where Google designs the hardware, especially since some phones may not be capable of the same level of on-device processing.
Keeping certain features as stand-alone apps also allows for regular updates so other Android phones can benefit from the latest developments without requiring firmware updates, which are often less frequent on non-Pixel phones.
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