It sure looks like Apple ripped out a valuable hearing loss feature from the AirPods line

In light of how AirPods Pro 2 (I guess they're "2" now, now "2nd Generation") are about to be "clinical grade hearing aids", it's worth digging a little bit into the history of the thing. AirPods have been doing some really nice things for those of us with hearing loss for some time. I wrote about it two and half years ago, in fact!

In short, we've been able to take the hearing tests from our audiologists (or apps, but the app tests have been… ehhhh at best) for years now, load them in, and apply them as a profile to basically all AirPods and some Beats headphones. It's a game-changer. The first time I listened to music this way, I heard details I hadn't heard in many years.

Today, I am actually in a slightly different position than I was when I wrote that article. My hearing loss has progressed, and I have upgraded to significantly more advanced hearing aids that can hop between all my devices smoothly and handle so much more. I need AirPods less often.

In quiet rooms, I can take calls on these new, better hearing aids, and in loud rooms, I can throw my AirPods Max over my hearing aids to get noise-cancellation and better call headset capabilities. I don't really use my first-generation AirPods Pro much at all anymore, just because they're not very convenient to use with hearing aids.

But.

I still listen to music. And while the streaming quality on my new hearing aids is leaps and bounds over my old ones, to the point that I'm actually rather satisfied with them for casual listening, I still want to use the AirPods Max that I bought with the understanding that I'd be able to use them tuned with the hearing test results from my audiologist.

And I very recently could do that! Until, apparently, iOS 18.1, when Apple introduced this "clinical grade hearing aids" feature that only works with AirPods I don't even own.

I have been testing the public betas for iOS 18.1 and iPadOS 18.1 for a couple weeks, and Headphone Accommodations in the release candidate—which will almost certainly be the same release that everyone gets next week—is entirely missing the option to use the audiogram from my audiologist that I have loaded in the Health app.

I reported this, of course. Surely it had something to do with changing things up for the AirPods Pro 2 thing, right, and it'd be fixed? Unfortunately, I have yet to receive any verbal reply of any kind, but the feedback report was resolved the other day as "Investigation complete - Works as currently designed".

I have tried installing the latest firmware on all my AirPods. I have tried removing and replacing my audiograms in Health and trying to go through Custom Audio Setup again—I'm never prompted. Nothing I do makes the audiogram option come back. (Except restoring to iOS 18.0.1, that is. That works… while I still can do that, at least. I may do a big restore-fest this weekend, perhaps?)

The lack of option led me to believe Apple had now intentionally removed the audiogram feature from Headphone Accommodations. To be honest, I'm very confused now. Since I originally wrote the first version of this post, there have been reports of people experiencing all sorts of things, so I don't know. All I do know is that on 18.1, I just can't establish an audiogram setup unless I have AirPods Pro 2; on 18.0.1, I can.

It's frustrating. The Headphone Accommodations feature itself is even still there—it's just been stripped down to the basic "Balanced Tone", "Vocal Range", and "Brightness" options with a soft sounds boost slider that you get if you don't have an audiogram. Why remove the audiogram? The audiogram is specifically useful for people with hearing loss. Like me.

I can understand why steering someone to using the better feature if they've got AirPods Pro 2 makes sense, but the other headphones in the AirPods (and Beats!) lines that will never be "clinically validated hearing aids" can still give folks with hearing loss a tremendous benefit when it comes to media and calls.

What I would love to see is for someone with media access to ask Apple about their history with Hearing Accommodations and what their plans are for the future with the rest of their AirPods and Beats lines and people with hearing loss. Ask them why—why would this feature stop working now?

And I just wanna say, the "Apple is force-obsoleting an old product" take doesn't ring true to me. This feature didn't just stop working on the first-generation AirPods Pro. It stopped working on every other supported pair of headphones, including compatible Beats headphones and the massive Max. These are very different products.

This has been a tremendously useful feature and I'm not kidding when I say I would not have bought AirPods Max without it. It's possible this is all a bizarre bug, but wow, what a bug, if so—this is a very important feature for a lot of people who are never going to adopt a hearing aid that won't even last half their day, and even if it's just broken, instead of ripped out… really, come on.