I’m sorry for the clickbait headline, but the urgency is real, because I’m seeing people making purchasing decisions based on a technical feature that’s not available in the UK yet.

If you’re a middle-aged man or woman, you may have noticed that it’s difficult to hear people in some social situations. I certainly have, and so have some of my friends. Generally in pubs and bars with hard surfaces and lots of background noise.

I tell myself that I need to get a professional hearing test. I keep trying at Specsavers when I have my eyes tested but have struggled with appointment availability. And anyway, it’s not that bad. Plus I don’t have a couple of thousand pounds ready for buying hearing aids.

Apple is bringing Hearing Health capabilities to the masses

When I heard that Apple AirPods Pro 2 have hearing aid capabilities, I was very interested. A consumer tech device that might help me in those limited circumstances when I need to wear a hearing aid, without the financial outlay.

It’s been possible to create an audiogram and use it with your AirPods (or other headphones) for a while, but there’s lots of excitement as Apple is bringing Hearing Health capabilities natively to the iPhone with iOS18 and with AirPods Pro 2. But, if you’re in the UK, you might want to hold off…

Here’s the problem: AirPods Pro 2 do not yet have regulatory approval as hearing aids in the UK.

They do in many other countries, but not here. Not at the time of researching this post in late-November 2024. But there is a global website, and a global ad campaign. Apple even says in the notes for this ad that:

“The Hearing Test and Hearing Aid features are regulated health features that require approval and will be offered after authorization is received. Feature availability varies by region”

Unfortunately, I’ve seen people (including those with profound hearing loss) saying they will ask Santa for some AirPods Pro for Christmas, based on advertising this feature.

So, what can you do?

1. Firstly, and I rarely give this advice to anyone, turn off automatic updates. Do not let your iPhone update to iOS 18.x. Manually apply updates for 17.x. Of course, that means you won’t get other iOS18 goodness either, but Apple Intelligence isn’t available in the UK yet either (like the Heading Aid feature, it’s “coming soon”).
2. Then, download the Mimi app, find a quiet space and carry out a hearing test. Follow these instructions to save the audiogram to Apple Health and set up the Headphone Accomodations for your AirPods. Basically, you can get some what Apple will bring to the UK, but only with older operating systems that don’t have the Apple capabilities built in (and turned on for other regions).
3. Finally, keep an eye on the Apple website. This is the page that has the details on regional availability for the Apple Hearing Heath features.

One more thing

The new Hearing Health features are for Apple AirPods Pro 2. I checked mine: they are listed on my receipt as “AirPods Pro (2nd generation)”. Is that the same thing? The short answer is “yes”, but it took me a while to get that information.

I had an infuriating online chat with Apple Support, who seemed incapable of understanding my question, despite me providing serial numbers and product codes. Thankfully, I also found an Apple support article, which gave me the answer (yes). Mine are model number A3048 which is now called “AirPods Pro 2 with MagSafe Charging Case (USB-C)”. Why can’t they just say “the marketing folks changed the name”?

Featured image by Miguel Angel Avila on Unsplash.