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With an iPhone and a pair of AirPods, you can use iOS 16's Live Listen feature to help if you're hard of hearing when standing in a noisy environment. place – or even eavesdrop on conversations from afar.
Live Listen was not designed to help spies or the paranoid. And there must be subtler ways of eavesdropping than showing your iPhone in front of people and then walking away with AirPods in your ears.
But beyond the general – and excellent – amplification of sound to help you hear, Listen Live is directional. When you're in a crowded bar or sitting in a noisy restaurant, you can turn your iPhone towards whoever you're talking to.
Then you will hear them amplify and be able to hear them much better in the cacophony of your surroundings.
Just need to set it up the first time and then easily turn it on when needed. On top of that, you'll also need to be able to easily turn it off, as AppleInsider tested the feature to drain the battery a lot.
How to set up Live Listen
Setting up Live Listen on really is to make the control easily accessible. Until you actively add a button to the Control Center, you won't be able to start Live Listen.
On your iPhone:
- go to Settings
- select Control Center
- Scroll down to More Controls
- Search for Hearing and tap the green plus sign to add it to Included Elements controls
If Hearing is not in the Additional Controls section, you will find that it is already in the section >Included controls one.
This is a list of controls in the Control Center. You can also press and hold the drag handles to reorder them. As you drag the list up and down, you are rearranging the grid of controls that you will then see in the Control Center.
Move Rumor to the top of the list. The lower ones will appear below the screen in the Control Center and you will have to scroll through them to get to them.
It's not exactly difficult, but it's much more convenient to have a Live Listen control right on the screen, without scrolling.
Add Listen Live “Hearing” to Control Center
There is an important thing though. Do not play music when you turn on Live Listen.
Apple seems to have improved this since the feature first appeared in iOS 12. Now the music is immediately louder due to Live Listen, but it's not as deafening as it used to be.
However, make sure you stop the music before starting Live Listen.
How to start Live Listen
- Put your AirPods in your ear.
- Swipe down on your iPhone to open Control Center.
- Ignore your hearing controls and tap the AirPlay icon in the upper right corner of your music controls instead.
- In the list of devices that appears, click to select your AirPods.
- Tap away from controls to return to Control Center
- Now click on Hearing< /strong> ear icon
- Tap either the Live Listen Off text or the button at the bottom of the screen
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Your AirPods will now transmit the sounds your iPhone microphones pick up. So turn your iPhone towards the person you are with.
You must be connected to your AirPods or Listen Live cannot be enabled
You may also need to explain what you are doing as you have to leave their AirPods turned on for this to work, and that might seem a bit rude.
Then, when things calm down or you just end the call, turn off Live Listen as soon as possible to save battery. Swipe down on iPhone to open Control Center.
Then tap the Hearing ear icon, which will display constantly changing volume levels in your environment. Now press Live Listen.
Click the Hearing icon in the Control Center, and then turn Listen Live on or off.
To disable this feature, click ” Enable live listening”. And to turn it back on, click Live Listen Off.
Enjoy we have this: it's one of those great accessibility features that can help all users in some cases besides just leaving your iPhone somewhere and listening to what's going on around him.