Connect your hearing aids to your phone

Modern hearing aids can do something rather wonderful. They can talk straight to your phone, so a call goes right into your ears, the music you love plays clearly, and you can hear the person on the line without holding the phone against your head. If nobody has shown you how, it can feel like a mystery, and the sound sometimes ends up in only one ear, which is enough to make anyone give up. It need not be that hard. Once your aids are paired the first time, they reconnect on their own every day, and everything just works.

What "pairing" actually means

The word you will hear is Bluetooth, and all it means is the phone talking to nearby devices without a cable. Pairing is simply the once-off introduction, where the phone and your hearing aids meet and agree to work together. You only do it once. After that first handshake, the two remember each other, and every time you put your aids in near your phone they reconnect quietly by themselves. So the whole job is really just that first introduction, and then you are set.

Before you start, give your aids a fresh battery or a full charge, because a tired battery is the single most common reason pairing will not take. Have the phone right beside you, and set aside a calm few minutes. It is not a race, and there is nothing you can break by trying.

Pairing on an iPhone

Apple built hearing aid support right into the iPhone, and it lives in a sensible place once you know where to look. Made for iPhone aids, often written as MFi, connect through the Accessibility settings rather than the ordinary Bluetooth list, which is the part that trips people up. You open Settings, then Accessibility, then Hearing Devices, and with your aids switched on and close by, the phone finds them and offers to pair. You tap to accept, sometimes twice if you have two aids, and that is the introduction done.

From then on your iPhone treats the aids as its own. Calls can flow to your ears, and you get a few handy extras, like adjusting the volume of each aid from the phone. If you ever want to check or reconnect them, that same Hearing Devices screen is where you go, so it is worth remembering the path: Settings, Accessibility, Hearing Devices.

Pairing on an Android phone

Android phones do the same job through a system called ASHA, which is simply Android's way of speaking to hearing aids. On most Android phones the aids appear in the normal Bluetooth or connected devices list, so you open Settings, go to Connected devices or Bluetooth, choose to add a new device, and pick your aids from the list that appears. As with the iPhone, the aids need to be on, charged and close by for the phone to find them.

Some hearing aids also have their own app, made by the company that produced them, and that app can make pairing smoother and give you a few extra controls. If your aids came with an app, it is worth having it installed, though it is not essential just to get calls and sound flowing. The plain Bluetooth pairing above is usually all you need to begin.

Sending calls and sound to your ears

Once your aids are paired, the lovely part begins. When a call comes in, on most modern aids the sound routes straight to your ears automatically, so you simply answer and hear the other person clearly, no phone held up to the side of your head. If a call ever comes out of the phone's own speaker by mistake, there is a small audio button on the call screen, and tapping it lets you choose your hearing aids so the sound moves across.

Music, radio, videos and podcasts work the same way. Anything the phone plays can go straight into your ears, at a volume that suits you, without disturbing anyone else in the room. It is one of the quiet joys of connected aids, that the phone becomes a private, clear little speaker just for you.

The "only one ear" fix

If sound is coming through only one ear, please do not despair, because this is one of the most common things we are asked about and it is almost always a two-minute fix. Nine times out of ten one aid has simply lost its connection or run its battery low. So the first thing to check is that both aids are switched on and properly charged, since a flat aid on one side is the usual culprit.

If both aids are healthy and one ear is still silent, the next step is to nudge the connection back to life. Turning Bluetooth off and on again often does it, and so does taking both aids out of their case and putting them back in, which prompts them to pair together as a pair rather than singly. When one side stubbornly stays quiet, the sure fix is to forget the aids on the phone and pair them fresh, which clears out whatever got confused and brings both ears back together. Our guide on what to do when Bluetooth will not connect covers this reset in more detail if you would like it.

Hearing the television clearly

People often ask whether the phone can send the television to their aids too, and the answer is that the television is usually a separate arrangement. Rather than going through the phone, a small streamer box connects the TV directly to your hearing aids, so the show comes into your ears at a volume that suits you while everyone else keeps the room at a level they like. It ends the old argument over the remote, gently. Setting up a TV streamer is its own small job, and it is one we are very happy to arrange alongside the phone.

A gentle word on what we do and do not touch

It is worth saying plainly. Everything on this page is about the connection between your phone and your aids, and none of it changes how your hearing aids are tuned. The settings that decide how loud different sounds are, and how your aids are shaped to your hearing, belong to your audiologist, and that is exactly where they should stay. Think of our part as the plumbing that carries the sound, and their part as the careful tuning of what you hear. We are glad to handle all the phone and connection side so the two work together nicely.

Let us set it up with you, calmly

If pairing, calls and the one-ear puzzle feel like a lot to face alone, this is exactly the kind of thing we sort out gently and for good. We pair your aids properly, get calls and music flowing to your ears, and make sure both sides work so you never fight with one-ear silence again. Get in touch and we will walk through it with you at your own pace. New to all this? Start with our guide on where to start with tech help.