Hearing aids do a lot. They don't do everything. When a patient tells you they still can't follow the conversation at a restaurant or the family dinner table, Hearing Buddy is a free, private tool you can hand them — no strings for them, and none for you.
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.
Buddy Mode connects iPhones in the same room into one captioned conversation — family dinner included.
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.
Everything is free for clinics. Here's what partnering looks like:
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 — no signup needed.
We mint a custom code (like YOURCLINIC) that gives your patients an extended free run of Buddy+ extras — Watch alerts, summaries, Speaker Labels. A small gift, from your clinic.
Free Buddy+ for you and your front desk, so you can demo everything on a booth iPad or your own phone before you ever recommend it.
Your clinic gets its own page and a pin on our partner map — name, location, your website, and your patient offer code — on a site thousands of people visit while researching their hearing.
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.
Download the kit and try the app yourself — the demo takes a minute.
Fill in the form below — clinic name, city, email. Thirty seconds, no paperwork.
We set you up — your offer code, your professional account, your page on the map.
We'll reply within a couple of days with your offer code and professional account. No newsletters, no spam — just the setup.
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.