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With an iPhone and a pair of AirPods, you can iOS 15‘s Live Listen feature to help when you are hard of hearing, in a loud place – or even eavesdropping on conversations from a distance.
Live Listen is not made to help spies or paranoid people. And there must be more subtle ways to eavesdrop than to you iPhone in front of people and then run away with AirPods in your ears.
But in addition to general – and excellent – amplifying sounds to help you hear, Listen Live is focused. If you’re in a crowded bar or noisy restaurant, you can point your iPhone at the person you’re talking to.
You hear them amplified and you can hear them much better than the cacophony of your environment.
You just need to set it up the first time and then simply turn it on when you need it. In addition, you should also be able to disable it easily, as in AppleInsider testing, the feature was a large battery drain.
Set up live listening
Setting up Live Listen is really about making the controls easily accessible. Until you actively add the button to the Control Center, you won’t be able to start Live Listen.
- Go to Settings
- To elect Control Center
- Scroll down to More Controls
- Find to belong and tap the green plus sign to add it to Controls Included
if to belong is not in the More Controls section, you will see that it is already in the Controls Included a.
That’s a list of the controls in the Control Center, and you can also tap and hold the drag handles to rearrange them all. As you drag the list up and down, you rearrange the grid of controls you then see in Control Center.
Movement to belong somewhere at the top of the list. The bottom ones appear below the screen in the Control Center and you have to scroll to reach them.
That’s not exactly difficult, but having the Live Listen controls right there on the screen, without scrolling, is much more convenient.
An important thing. Do not play music when you enable Live Listen.
Apple seems to have improved this since the feature first appeared in iOS 12† Now the music is immediately louder through Live Listen, but not as deafening as it used to be.
However, make sure you have stopped all music before starting Live Listen.
Start live listening
- Put your AirPods in your ear
- Swipe down on iPhone to open Control Center
- Ignore the hearing controls and instead tap the AirPlay icon in the top right corner of the music controls
- In the list of devices that appears, tap to choose your AirPods
- Tap away from the controls to return to the Control Center
- Now tap the to belong ear icon
- Tap the text Live Listen Off or the button at the bottom of the screen
Now your AirPods will relay the sounds that your iPhone’s microphones pick up. So turn your iPhone to the person you are with.
You must be connected to your AirPods or Listen Live won’t turn on
You’ll probably also need to explain what you’re doing as you’ll need to leave your AirPods on for this to work and that can come across as a little rude.
When the environment calms down or you’re just finishing your call, turn off Live Listen as soon as possible to save battery. Swipe down on your iPhone to open Control Center.
Then tap the to belong ear icon – which shows you the constantly changing volume levels in your environment. Now tap Listen live†
Tap the Hearing icon in Control Center, then toggle Live Listen on and off
To turn it off, tap Live Listen on. And to turn it back on, tap Live Listen off.
And enjoy that we have this: it’s one of those notable accessibility features that can help all users sometimes except leave your iPhone somewhere and listen to what is going on around it.