Protect your hearing with these settings on iPhone and Apple Watch.

It is estimated that in the United States alone, approximately 37.5 million adults are hearing impaired. Of this number, men are thought to be twice as likely to experience degradation in listening quality compared to women. This is evidenced by the data shared National Institute of Deafness from the United States.

For this reason, some companies have already set to work to minimize this problem among their users. Apple is one of them, and both in their iPhones and iPads, and in Apple Watch those from Cupertino enable some monitoring tools ambient and musical noise. In addition, they help us set alarms when we exceed the decibel limit we can be exposed to on a daily basis.

This is how your iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch can help protect your hearing; and to activate it, you just need to follow some pretty simple steps.

What noise level can we be exposed to?

Certainly, not all noise levels deal the same damage our hearing. In addition, it will also depend on the amount of time we spend in certain decibel ranges.

According to information provided by Apple from its Health app, these are levels and times during which we may experience noise before we start with progressive hearing loss.

• 80 dB: about 5 hours 30 minutes per day
• 85 dB: about 1 hour 45 minutes per day
• 90 dB: about 30 minutes per day
• 95 dB: just 10 minutes a day
• 100 dB: even a few minutes a day

How to control decibels from your iPhone or iPad

While the iPhone doesn’t offer a tool like the Noise app on the Apple Watch, it does have some features on iOS and iPadOS, so we can control the noise level to which we are subject.

1. Open the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad.
2. Go to Control Center.
3. Scroll down the list and tap the Plus (+) icon next to Hearing.
4. Now open your iPhone’s Control Center by swiping up (iPhone 8 and earlier); or by swiping down from the top right corner of your iPhone or iPad (iPhone X and above).
5. You will see an ear icon at the bottom.

now that we have a set of apple labelswe just need to set it up.

1. To turn on loud sound alerts on your iPhone or iPad, go to Settings.
2. Go to Availability.
3. Go to Audio/Video.
4. Turn on the hearing aid notification feature.
5. This will notify you when your hearing aids exceed the recommended time and volume for daily audio listening.

Now, let’s set a sound limit that our hearing aids can play, whether they are made by Apple or not.

1. In the settings, go to the “Sounds and vibration” section.
2. Go to hearing aid safety.
3. Turn on Reduce loud sounds.

Additional measures from Apple to protect your hearing

After you set up all these sections, your iPhone or iPad will show you the decibel level when you listen to music with headphones. To see this measure, you just need to enter Control Center and click the ear icon which we set up earlier.

Depending on the colors on the screen, you will find yourself on one threshold or another. While green means everything is fine, the indicator will turn yellow when you are listening at a potentially dangerous volume.

Besides, you can use tool listen live Located at the bottom of the Hearing tool, you can measure the sounds in your environment. This way you can check if you are in an area free from noise that could be harmful to your hearing.

Login to the tab Hearing in the Health app from Apple, you can view your listening history. In this way, you will be able to see how long you have been exposed to a certain noise level during the last days.

Track decibels on Apple Watch

In addition to doing this from your iPhone, Apple Watch has an interesting feature with which we can control the decibels of our hearing aids and environmental sounds.

1. Go to the Noise app on your Apple Watch.
2. Activate the feature if you have never done it before.
3. The app will show you a message telling you if everything is ok or if you are in a place where there is too much noise. In addition, by clicking “More” you will be able to see more detailed information about the sounds around you.

Also you can create a face for your Apple Watch which shows information about the noise around you.

You can also quickly access noise information from your hearing aids by sliding Control Center on Apple Watch. Here you enter the ear icon located at the bottom and you will be able to see all the information about the hearing level your hearing aids are at.