Why are AirPods Pro 2 Hearing Aid features not available in the UK?

As I understand the MHRA the AirPods are a class of device that just needs to be registered. There is no ‘approval’ procedure. Apple just needs to gets it stuff together!

The hearing test and audiogram custom sound will be available in 18.2 released this week 9/12->

So this with transparency and/or adaptive transparency gives us a lot of the functionality…

Like I said elsewhere in this thread; 18.2 is released this week and the audiogram customising and apple hearing test is included.

The MHRA are still giving out incorrect information.

The Vice President of Apple Health sent me this on the 17th December after I wrote to Tim Cook.

Here Looks like it’s getting close. Also reported in The Telegraph.

Here is the article from the Telegraph:

…correction: one can use an audiogram to customise the headphone frequency response for sound ie. Music and phone calls.

There is *no* hearing aid assistance though.

rasg wrote:

Even if your country does get approval, if your hearing test shows worse than moderate hearing loss they Airpods won’t work.

If the feature is approved in your region, you will be able to do the hearing test. If your hearing falls outside of the range of "Mild to Moderate" hearing loss, you will not be able to use the hearing aid function. I have negligible hearing loss according to the test and I can't set up Hearing Aids.

If you already have the Airpod Pro 2s AND your iPhone is on an old IOS like 17.7.1 or older they will already work as hearing aids without any restrictions.

You're talking about Live Listen which is an entirely different feature. The Airpods are not functioning as hearing aids in the technical sense of the term:

Use Live Listen with AirPods or Beats - Apple Support

The AirPods have been available as hearing aids since 2022.

Again, that is incorrect.

"I have moderate hearing loss and have been using the transparency features for over a year successfully. Music sounds much clearer, and I'm able to converse with people almost as well as I can with my prescription hearing aids. I'm not sure why you are no longer able to use your audiogram as it is still available on my APP2 with ios 18.1."

The same for me but I have only been using mine for over a month. They are excellent and work for me very well.

I'm not sure why Idris is arguing the point when he is simply wrong. He is trying to flog a dead horse when we now have two people who are hard of hearing who USE them hearing aids.

Thank you for weighing in on this, by the way.

I am using IOS 17.7.1 as I am UK based and approval hasn't been granted yet for us. An update to 18.1 on my iPhone will simply stop mine working so I won't be upgrading any time soon.

"If they were hearing aids, they would work on things other than listening to music. But they don't. Or didn't until now."

They do work on improving hearing as well as music. This feature has been available for a while.

Yes it has.

Hera is the first video I found on YouTube to set them up.

IN IOS 18.1, if you attempt a hearing test that is in any way severe, a screen will appear telling you to book an appointment with an Audiologist and will go no further.

I'm UK based as well. I've seen nothing different in the accessibility> headphone accomodations since upgrading to 18.1.

I use the 'mimi' hearing test to update my hearing test results in the health app. My hearing is 31 dBHL left and 33dBHL right. Maybe your results are more severe and affect how iOS responds.

My left ear bordered on severe in my Costco Audiogram but the Mimi app showed it to be moderate.

Have the menus changed at all? Somebody on the Facebook forum upgraded and ran the Apple Hearing test and was promptly blocked out as her hearing is into the severe range. A message popped up and told her to book an appointment with an Audiologist and wouldn’t go any further.

Others who live in the UK have upgraded to IOS 18.1 can no longer access any of the hearing features since they did the upgrade. Others who had just bought the Airpods could not access the Apple hearing test or the hearing features.

The AirPods have been available as hearing aids since 2022.

Again, that is incorrect.

That's not incorrect at all. Many people, myself included, have been using the custom transparency mode based on an audiogram we had to provide, and this worked as hearing aids. A functionality that is now broken with 18.1 as audiogram cannot be used for custom transparency mode anymore.

thanosgr9 wrote:

That's not incorrect at all. Many people, myself included, have been using the custom transparency mode based on an audiogram we had to provide, and this worked as hearing aids. A functionality that is now broken with 18.1 as audiogram cannot be used for custom transparency mode anymore.

It's not incorrect. I'm not denying you could do that or that it helped with some things. But it didn't do what a hearing aid does and wasn't approved as such.

It's not incorrect. I'm not denying you could do that or that it helped

with some things. But it didn't do what a hearing aid does and wasn't

approved as such.

I see you are determined to split hairs on this. We all now know that the Apple AirPod Pro 2s that were released in 2022 and many people in the know have been using them for a while. Apple didn't have FDA approval so they couldn't market them as such.

The word "aid" means to help or assist so those people have been using them as hearing aids for a couple of years. Without mine all I hear is a muffled smudge in my left earso they are definitely aiding my hearing.

You are using some technicality to decide they are not really hearing aids yet they have been aiding people with their hearing for more than two years.

I bet if you asked anybody who uses them to aid their hearing, they would disagree with you.

I just got off the phone with Apple in the US. They say they will notify me of when the UK has approval for hearing aid function.

Then I read that other people say they have got the function. The question is are these people actually in the UK?

Do we know if Apple has actually applied yet?

There is a way/hack to run the hearing test in the UK (although you cannot use the AirPods in hearing aid mode yet)

interestingly enough I ran my AirPod hearing test and had a NHS audiologist test this week (9 month waitlist) and guess what… my results were identical so very impressive as I want to track my hearing over time

maybe an update apple on when you expect to launch this in the UK - I bought my AirPod pros solely for this feature based on your advertising. I really want the hearing aid support to see if it will save me a small fortune on hearing aid I most likely

now need