- The AirPods Pro 2's useful hearing aid mode is coming to the UK soon
- The feature is coming "within weeks" due to a change in the UK's regulations
- The mode is only available on the AirPods Pro 2 and not other AirPods
Apple's impressive hearing-aid mode for the AirPods Pro 2 is coming to the UK, following its launch in the US already (and the UAE more recently). As reported by The Telegraph, this is due to a change in the UK's regulations, and the newspaper says Apple confirmed the software "will be introduced within weeks".
Apple's hearing test, to determine whether you may have some amount of hearing loss, is already available in the UK, but the mode that takes your hearing loss data and enables the use of AirPods Pro 2 as full-on hearing aids to compensate for it – as long as you have mild to moderate hearing loss only – hasn't been available so far.
Speaking about the change in regulation that allows AirPods Pro 2 to be used in this way, UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting said, "Groundbreaking new hearing aid devices have the potential to help tens of thousands of people with hearing loss, helping them to live their life to the full. The action we’re taking will give businesses the green light to start selling these products to patients across the UK.
“This is part of the work this government is undertaking in partnership with leading technology companies, to harness the revolution in medical technology, bring our analogue healthcare into the digital age, and make life more convenient for patients.”
This mode is only available on the AirPods Pro 2 model of Apple's headphones – not the more affordable AirPods 4 or AirPods 4 with Active Noise Cancellation. Apple says that this is because those models lack an in-ear seal to improve noise isolation, which is necessary for its technology to be effective. The mode will not come to previous models of AirPods either – though I would expect it to be part of the feature list of the AirPods Pro 3, which is rumored to arrive later in 2025.
Apple is one of the first companies to add this kind of technology in its headphones, but you can expect to hear about it being in many more of the best earbuds in the future – Sennheiser, for example, is now owned by a company that specialises in hearing health, and has already made some products that merge needs for the hard of hearing with Sennheiser's consumer technology.
An ideal bridge towards other hearing health products
I'm delighted to see this come to the UK, because we've already tried out Apple's hearing-aid mode in the US and found it to be potentially very useful. I have several members of my family here in the UK who show signs of struggling to hear at times, but who have been resistant to the idea of getting tested or getting regular hearing aids, as is the case with many people, for lots of varying reasons ranging from pride to fear.
AirPods Pro 2 provide a more friendly and relatively affordable way for people who aren't keen on the process of a full hearing aid to 'try' augmenting their hearing – perhaps only in locations where conversations can be particularly hard to keep up with, since it's so easy to pop the AirPods Pro in and out, and to carry them around in their case.
Really, that's the ideal way to use them, because the maximum six-hour battery life won't get you through a full day of use anyway.
I'm hoping that this mode on the AirPods Pro 2 will help me to perhaps bridge my family members into becoming convinced that seeing an audiologist could help improve their quality of life.
In its announcement of support for consumer tech health devices such as this mode from AirPods Pro 2, the UK Government noted that it's still extremely important for people to consult with their doctors about their hearing and not to rely solely on these automated tests.
