Useful tips for those of you who have hearing aids that are paired with your smartphone:
- To pair hearing aids to an android phone, ensure your Bluetooth is on. Pull down the settings screen and pair the hearing aids directly through the Bluetooth. The downloaded app (which correlates to the hearing aid manufacturer) should then find your hearing aids.
- To pair hearing aids to an iPhone, ensure your Bluetooth is on. Open settings, touch General, Accessibility, and scroll down to MFi Hearing Devices. The phone will start looking for the hearing aids.
- If your smartphone is not pairing with the hearing aids, close all of your apps by double-clicking on the circle at the bottom of your phone, and sliding each of the apps that are open and displayed like a fanned deck of cards, and this will close out the apps. Shut your phone down completely and start again. Open and close the battery doors of the hearing aids to put them into a stronger pairing mode. This mode lasts approximately two minutes.
- For iPhones: If you want to keep the pairing of the hearing aids to your phone, but do not want phone calls streaming into your hearing aids, open settings, touch General, Accessibility, scroll down to MFi Hearing Devices, and touch Audio Routing and touch “Call Audio” and then touch “Never hearing aids”. You can also change for video/music through “Media Audio”.
- For iPhones: If you receive a phone call and want to increase the volume, change the volume of your smartphone itself. You do not need to go into the hearing aid app to change the volume of your hearing aids.
- For iPhones: If you want to pass the phone to someone else but the phone call is streaming through to your hearing aids, simply touch the “audio” circle and a menu will appear. It will be checked with your name (which is your hearing devices). You can either touch iPhone or Speaker so the other person can also hear the caller.
- The hearing aid app, regardless of manufacturer, has a “help” function to help you navigate through so you can learn how to access all the features. Your audiologist will give you an orientation on the day of the hearing aid fitting and will teach you how to use the app in addition to showing you the “help” tool, as it can be very useful.
If your hearing aids are not smartphone capable, contact Audio Help Hearing Centers to learn more about the latest technology.
