Apple rolls out hearing aid and sleep apnea features in Malaysia. Here’s how to set it up

Apple has officially rolled out its latest sleep and hearing health features in Malaysia which include hearing aid for the AirPods Pro 2 as well as Sleep Apnea notification for the Apple Watch. According to the announcement, the new features are designed to bring informative and powerful ways to support its users in their sleep and hearing health conditions that impact billions of people globally.

Hearing Aid for AirPods Pro 2

It is estimated that 1.5 billion people worldwide are living with hearing loss and many are not aware of their condition. Research has found that hearing loss have detrimental impact to a person’s overall wellbeing which include dementia and social isolation. On top of that, 75% of people diagnosed with hearing loss haven’t received the assistive support that they need.

To help prevent and also to create awareness of potential hearing loss, Apple has developed what has been described as the world’s first end-to-end hearing health experience that covers a clinically validated Hearing Test feature, an over-the-counter Hearing Aid feature and Loud Sound reduction.

How to set up Hearing Aid on the AirPods Pro 2

The Hearing Health feature which include the Hearing Test and Hearing Aid is currently only supported on the AirPods Pro 2 with the latest firmware, paired to an iPhone or iPad running on iOS 18 or iPadOS 18, and later. The feature is intended for people aged 18 years or older.

To get started, you’ll need to run a hearing test which determines your ability to hear various frequencies from 250Hz to 8KHz. To complete this test accurately, you’ll need to conduct in a quiet environment as the test will be interrupted mid-way if it detects unwanted background noise.

As usual, your hearing test results and history are stored securely and privately in Apple Health and there’s also the option to share the results with your doctor by exporting to PDF.

With a fully charged AirPods Pro 2, here are the steps to run the test:

1. On your iPhone or iPad, go to Settings > your Airpods.
2. At the lower section of the page, you should see Hearing Health, tap on Hearing Test
3. Follow the instructions on the screen as it will run checks on your AirPods Pro and your background noise level.
   If the AirPods fitting isn’t good enough, the app may recommend changing to a different ear tips.
4. Once the test starts, the AirPods Pro 2 will play each tone three times and you have to tap on the screen if you can hear the tone. Take note that the tones can be very faint and you should tap if you can hear it. It is ok if you can’t hear several tones and it will proceed with the next tone. This hearing test may take a few minutes.
5. Once the test is completed, you will be shown the hearing test results which will highlight the severity of your hearing loss (little to no hearing loss, mild hearing loss, moderate hearing loss and severe hearing loss) which is measured in decibels of hearing level (dBHL).
6. Once the test is completed, you can proceed to enable Hearing Assistance features which include Hearing Aid and Media Assist.

Here are the steps to set up Hearing Assistance:

1. On your iPhone or iPad, go to Settings > your Airpods.
2. At the lower section of the page, you should see Hearing Health, tap on Hearing Assistance
3. From here, you can enable the Hearing Aid feature to amplify the sound around you or set up Media Assist to improve the clarity of music, video calls and voice calls.

Sleep Apnea feature for Apple Watch Series 9 or higher

Sleep apnea is a disorder where your breathing stops momentarily while you sleep and this prevents your body from getting enough oxygen. It is estimated that sleep apnea affects over 1 billion people worldwide and they are mostly gone undiagnosed. Besides getting poor quality sleep, studies have shown that sleep apnea can lead to higher risk of hypertension, type 2 diabetes and cardiac issues.

To help detect signs of Sleep Apnea, Apple Watch now has a Breathing Disturbance feature that uses its accelerometer to detect small movements at the wrist associated with interruptions to normal respiratory patterns during your sleep. It analyses breathing disturbances data every 30 days and will notify if there are consistent signs of moderate to severe sleep apnea so that users can consult their doctors for the next course of action.

The Sleep Apnea notification feature is currently available on the latest Apple Watch Series 9, Apple Watch Series 10 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 in Malaysia running on the latest watchOS, paired to an iPhone with the latest version of iOS. Here’s how to set it up:

1. On your iPhone, open the Health app
2. Tap on browse, and then select Respiratory
3. Under Sleep Apnea Notifications, tap on Setup, then Next
4. Confirm your date of birth and if you’ve been diagnosed with sleep apnea before, then tap on continue
5. Tap on next and then done.

Take note that your sleep must be set up with Track Sleep with Apple Watch turned on. You must also wear your Apple Watch to sleep for a minimum of 10 nights over a 30-day period.

To view your Sleep Apnea notifications or Breathing Disturbances, just go to the Health app > Browse > Respiratory. You can tap on either Sleep Apnea Notifications or Breathing Disturbances to view your stats.

The nightly Breathing Disturbances are classified as elevated or not elevated, and can be viewed over one-month, six-month or one-year period. Similar to other health reports on your iPhone, the data is stored securely within the Apple Health and users are also able to share the report with their doctors in PDF format.