HearAura gives iPhone owners a free Auracast assistant, a year before Apple might

A free iPhone app called HearAura, released on 9 October, does the thing Apple has declined to do for three years: it scans for Auracast broadcasts and tells a pair of hearing aids which one to join.

The gap it fills

Hearing aids receive the broadcast directly; they have for years. What they lack is a screen, so a phone has to find the broadcast and pass it on. Android does this in Bluetooth settings. iOS does not, so until now an iPhone owner needed a hearing-aid maker's own app to carry the assistant role. ReSound, Oticon, Starkey and Phonak do; Widex and Signia do not. HearAura is brand-neutral.

What it cannot do

Hand a broadcast to ordinary earbuds. Apple does not expose LE Audio to third-party apps for consumer audio, so Galaxy Buds or Sony earbuds on an iPhone are as stuck as they were. The app works with hearing aids that implement the assistant handover over the hearing-aid protocols iOS does allow.

It also cannot make the phone a broadcaster. The Avantree Aura C, a USB-C dongle on pre-order, is the other iPhone workaround and has the same limit.

Where Apple stands

The iPhone 18, launched on 9 September, has a Bluetooth 6 radio and no Auracast. WWDC in June brought captioning features and nothing on LE Audio. Apple is, in Aurahear's phrase, the only major holdout: Samsung, Google, Sony, Xiaomi, LG, Panasonic, Philips, Microsoft and every hearing-aid maker have shipped something. Our platform table tracks the state of play.

For now, an iPhone owner with hearing aids has a free path. An iPhone owner with earbuds does not.