Apple shared another glimpse of the advanced hearing health features coming to the AirPods Pro 2 with iOS 18.1 next week. The Cupertino tech giant announced the AirPods Pro 2 hearing aid feature at its September iPhone launch event. As soon as Apple previewed this feature, it caught everyone’s attention and became the most impressive iOS 18 feature for many. Since then, fans have been waiting to get their hands on this incredible thing. Unfortunately, even if you have AirPods 2 and a iOS 18 Compatible iPhone, The hearing aid feature will not be available worldwide. Read on to find out if AirPods 2 Hearing Health is available in your country.
airpods 2 hearing health features
AirPods 2 Hearing Health will include three main features: Hearing protection, hearing testing, and hearing aid functionality. With hearing aid capability, your AirPods Pro 2 can be used as a clinical-grade hearing aid, boosting specific sounds in real time. Users will have to take a hearing test on their iPhone, which will be similar to a clinical hearing test conducted by an audiologist. The test will play a series of tones with different frequencies to which users can respond. AirPods will use those results to fine-tune the sound and turn the AirPods 2 into hearing aids. The results will be stored in the Health app, and users can adjust their AirPods audio settings accordingly.
In addition to hearing aids, the update will include advanced hearing protection that actively monitors the user’s surroundings and reduces the impact of loud noises like concerts or traffic. This feature will be integrated into various listening modes on AirPods.
Availability of AirPods Pro 2 hearing aids
The hearing aid feature is only available on the second generation AirPods Pro, both USB-C and Lightning versions. Furthermore, according to A footnote on Apple’s websiteAirPods 2 will have hearing health features Will be available only for US and Canada users.
This means, even if you have AirPods Pro 2 and an iOS 18 or iPadOS compatible device, you can’t use the hearing health features outside the US and Canada, at least for now.
When Apple releases new options for health features, they have to be approved by local regulators. in America, FDA authorizes AirPods Pro 2 First as over-the-counter hearing aid software. It appears that Apple is waiting to receive approval from more health regulators around the world to expand Hearing Health capabilities to more countries.
If you live in the US and Canada, all you need to do is install iOS 18.1 on your iPhone or iPadOS 18.1 on your iPad and then look for the Hearing Health option in the AirPods settings.
In addition to the AirPods Pro hearing features, Apple also previewed a list of the first Apple Intelligence features coming with iOS 18.1. As expected, the upcoming iOS 18.1 will bring writing instrumentNotification summaries, smart replies in mail and messages, a sophisticated clean-up toolSiri’s ability to answer questions about Apple products, and much more. Other impressive AI features like Genmoji, image playground, and ChatGPT integration Will arrive at a later date.
