When a patient says "they help, but I still miss things in noise," Hearing Buddy is the free, private captioning app you can hand them. Everything on this page — the printable clinic kit, professional access to evaluate the app yourself, the partner map — exists to make that moment easier. Nothing to buy, nothing to disclose.
Apple Design Award Finalist
in Inclusivity
You hear it at every follow-up: "They help, but I still miss things in noise." Restaurants, group conversations, the TV across the room — the situations that drove your patient to your booth in the first place are the ones that follow them home.
Hearing Buddy fills that gap with live captions on the iPhone they already carry. It's not a hearing aid and it doesn't compete with the care you provide — it's the thing you can recommend for everything between appointments, the way you'd recommend communication strategies or a captioned phone.
Built by Lilly Seay, who lives with hearing loss — for the moments that used to make her want to stay home.
No minute meters, no session caps, no account, no credit card. Captions are never paywalled.
Audio never leaves the phone — a doctor's appointment stays in the room. Works fully offline.
A tap on the wrist when someone says their name or asks them a question — so they can stay present.
Caption Together shares live captions with the iPhones around the table — family dinner included, free.
Requires iOS 26 or later · iPhone, Apple Watch, Mac & Vision Pro · Optional Buddy+ upgrade is $59.99/year — captions stay free either way
The captions your patients need are free, forever. There's no commission, no kickback, no revenue share — recommending it costs them nothing and costs you nothing.
No accounts, no patient data, no audio uploads. Nothing flows between your clinic and us except a happier patient at the next follow-up.
It needs an iPhone on iOS 26 or later, it can't caption phone calls, and it's an assistive communication tool — not a medical device. We say so plainly, everywhere.
We kept it deliberately simple — no fees, no commissions, no quotas. Just tools for you and your patients.
You can't recommend what you haven't used. Hearing care professionals get every Buddy+ feature — Watch alerts, summaries, Speaker Labels, translation — free, for good. Request below; we'll email your code within a day.
A print-ready waiting-room poster and a chair-side quick reference: when to recommend it, and how to demo it in 60 seconds. Download the PDF.
Optional: if you'd like your clinic on our partner map, reply to our welcome note with your city and two sentences about your practice, and we'll build your page.
We maintain twenty free hearing-health guides and tools on this site, and we want them clinically reviewed. If you'd like a "Reviewed by Dr. ___, AuD" byline — with a link to your clinic — on content read by people actively researching their hearing, we'd love to talk. It's the most useful hour a partner can give us.
Thirty seconds, no sales call. We give every request a quick human look, then your lifetime Buddy+ access code lands in your inbox — usually within a day.
We'll send one welcome note, never a newsletter. The code unlocks Buddy+ on your personal device — patients just download the free app.
Hearing Buddy is an assistive communication tool. It is not a hearing aid or a medical device, and it does not diagnose, treat, or replace professional hearing care. The partner program involves no payments to or from hearing care professionals.