Apple Airpods can soon be used as a hearing aid on iOS 12

Apple, the Cupertino tech giant is holding its WWDC 2018 developer conference in San Jose, California. During the WWDC Apple has released new features and optimizations for the iOS 12. However, Apple had not spoken much about hardware, which is kind of a bummer for the users. However, it seems that the tech giant is working on making its Airpods more useful for the users with the iOS 12 update.

According to some reports from TechCrunch, Apple is working on making the Airpods compatible with the "Live Listen" assistive hearing app on iOS 12. The 'Live Listen' app makes the iPhone as a directional microphone in a way that people with hearing disabilities can hear audio via the phone, The sound or audio is then directly sent to a user's hearing aid from the iPhone.

It would be interesting to see the Live Listen becoming compatible with Apple Airpods as the app was earlier limited to third-party hearing devices including hearing aids or the implants. However, it seems that the iOS 12 plans to make this feature accessible to an average user who will now enable it from within the settings.

With the introduction of this feature on iOS 12, the consumers with hearing disabilities will now be able to rely on Airpods (the Airpods come much cheaper compared to other hearing aids or implants) to listen to the conversation of family and friends around them. Similar to the functionality of the hearing aids, the Airpods will pick up sound through a microphone, and forward them to an amplifier, which it directs it to a user's ears.

For our readers who have no idea about the Live Listen feature, we would like to add that the feature was released as a part of Apple's 'Made for iPhone' hearing aid program back in 2014. The feature allows the users with compatible hearing aid to pair the device with an iPhone and then switch on the feature to listen to people specifically in noisy environments.