This Year’s Big iOS 18 AirPods Feature Could Be Hearing Aid Support

While Apple’s big iOS releases are naturally mostly about the iPhone, each major iOS release over the past few years has also brought some significant new features to Apple’s AirPods — and there’s no reason to believe iOS 18 will be an exception.

For example, iOS 12 gave us Live Listen, iOS 13 brought Audio Sharing, Spatial Audio came with iOS 14, iOS 15 improved Find My support and added Conversation Boost, and iOS 16 made Spatial Audio personal. Last year, the AirPods Pro got exclusive new Adaptive Audio in iOS 17, marking the first time other current models of AirPods were left out of the fun.

Now, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman is giving us a hint of what we can expect iOS 18 to offer AirPods fans — and it may be something Apple has been working on for a while.

In his latest Power On newsletter, Gurman claims that the “big news” for the AirPods Pro this year will be a new “hearing aid mode” that will arrive as part of iOS 18 this fall.

Although the Live Listen feature provides some help for folks who have difficulty hearing, it’s no replacement for a proper hearing aid that’s prescribed by a doctor or audiologist — although it can be paired up withMade for iPhone hearing aids.

However, Apple has had ambitions to turn AirPods into actual hearing aids ever since the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed new regulations to allow for over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aids that can be purchased without a prescription.

While this more affordable class of hearing aids still won’t compare to a proper medical-grade prescription, it could help improve the lives of millions of folks who suffer from moderate hearing loss that they don’t feel is severe enough to consult an audiologist.

Gurman suggests this might be another AirPods Pro-exclusive feature, which wouldn’t be surprising considering they’re already riding a wave of exclusive audio features from last year’s iOS 17 release, thanks to the more powerful H2 chip inside.

Apple is expected to release two new pairs of standard AirPods this year — one with active noise cancellation and a more affordable “AirPods Lite” without — plus a new pair of AirPods Max. However, it’s unclear if those will get the new H2 chip or be left with the existing H1. Third-generation AirPods Pro aren’t expected until sometime next year, at the soonest, so Apple might choose to reserve its best chip for the current AirPods Pro until an H3 comes along to replace it.

With features like Live Listen and Conversation Boost already in play, the AirPods Pro have already proven to work almost as well as the OTC hearing aids that have popped up on the market in the months following the FDA’s green light for the new category. A 2022 report by the Wall Street Journal (Apple News+) cited a study that “found that a sound amplification feature on Apple’s AirPods Pro helped adults with mild-to-moderate hearing loss hear speech nearly as well as two prescription hearing aids.” While they didn’t meet the FDA standards for hearing aids, “they amplified sound as well as some less-advanced devices that help people hear better,” the researchers said.

At this point, not much else is known, and Gurman doesn’t seem to have too many additional details. Apple would presumably have to pursue FDA regulatory approval to actually claim “hearing aid” capabilities, but it could likely avoid that if it steered clear of medical terminology. Either way, if Apple does indeed plan to bake this into iOS 18, we’ll probably hear more about it when this year’s big release is shown off at June’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC).

[The information provided in this article has NOT been confirmed by Apple and may be speculation. Provided details may not be factual. Take all rumors, tech or otherwise, with a grain of salt.]