iOS sound hijacking
I use hearing aids with Bluetooth, which is fantastic for phone call clarity, watching videos, and listening to audiobooks. I use my iPad often for watching videos, so they’re constantly paired.
My particular model of hearing aid has a flaw where the ambient sound gets adjusted during streaming in such a way that it causes a static like sound that’s loud enough to require turning the sound up to hear whatever I’m streaming. I seriously doubt this is good for my hearing.
I can go into the app and adjust the ambient sound balance, which reduces the static sound but makes the sounds around me quieter. This will reset back randomly, sometimes even when I pause. Annoying, but I can live with it.
My issue is that if I play a game on my iPad, it turns on streaming even if I have the sound turned off in the game. So I’ll be sitting here listening to static while I’m playing a card game or something, it’s loud enough that it’s then harder to hear the people around me.
Does anyone know if there’s a way to force the sound off so I don’t have to mess with switching Bluetooth on and off and having to restart the hearing aids because suddenly they don’t pair even though it was working 5 minutes ago?
Hearing aids: Phonak Audio L90-RL (lumity)
iPad Air, 4th gen, WiFi only
iPad os:26.5
which model of hearing aids do you have?
Do you have anything like Settings > Accessibility > Hearing Devices > Automatic Streaming that can be disabled?
As an absolute last resort, you could make a shortcut tied to backtap that would cycle bluetooth.
Phonak Audio L90-RL (lumity)
They have old Bluetooth, I can't control them under accessibility. I've tried over and over to make that work, but no.
Edit: I'm not sure what that last part means. Back tap?
backtap is handy --- Settings > Acces > Touch > Back Tap at the bottom -- either two or three. For me, I have a shortcut to toggle the torch at 1%. Three taps on the back of my device and it turns on a dim light.
re: streaming --- is this helpful? [thread]
Also, in your bluetooth settings, are they set as hearing aids? Not sure if that matters or not. I've only messed with Jabras.
Weird, I don't have the back touch option. It's an older iPad, that's probably why.
The other part is helpful, it's the only thing that helps with the noise. It's the thing that resets when I pause the stream.
These won't be recognized as hearing aids in either ios or android, my understanding is that it's because they don't use the new Bluetooth protocol. I really have tried many times and can't get it to work.
ahh. wouldnt hurt to list the make and model of your hearing aids along with the model of your iPad along with the version of iOS you're on. That'll have a big impact on supporting it.
I hadn’t thought of that, good idea.
i find that iOS has a lot of goofy bluetooth headphone quirks. One thing to try is Accessibility > Audio & Visual > Call Audio Routing -- switch that from Automatic to Speaker. I doubt this will do anything, but there's been a rare bug for a while that you might be able to use to your advantage. If nothing changes, switch it back to automatic.
I just tried it, no change.
I really appreciate you trying to help. Every 5 years I can get a new pair and the tech is advancing so fast I’m hopeful they’ll work this out. Phonak has started supporting Auracast and LE audio in a couple of the new models, hopefully that’ll propagate to all of them before I get my next pair. I’m glad they did this, I had been considering switching brands because of how annoying this is.
My Mom has Jabras from Costco that seem decent wrt settings etc, but I really have no idea what to look for with the specs.
Goofy things, really. It should all be so simple with fine tuned controls -- even on the app-level for audio output.
I completely agree. I can block apps from using my location, why not my audio output?
right! I'm going to email them. Especially when you put it like that, it seems logical. Being able to route some sounds to speaker while others are in hearing aids or earbuds seems obvious.