Check headphone sound levels in Control Center on iPhone

While using headphones with iPhone, you can use Hearing in Control Center to check your headphone audio level.

AirPods, EarPods, and many other wired and wireless headphones are compatible with Hearing in Control Center.

  1. Add Hearing to Control Center.

    See Add and organize controls.

  2. Connect and wear your headphones.

  3. Open Control Center, then tap the Hearing Devices button.

  4. Play audio on your iPhone.

    The audio level (in decibels) of your headphones is displayed on the Headphone Level meter.

    A card overlaying the screen. The card shows a graph of the headphone level for a pair of AirPods. The graph shows 37 decibels and is labeled OK. Below the graph, Live Listen is shown as Off.

You can also tap Live Listen (below the Headphone Level meter) to turn Live Listen on or off. Live Listen streams the sound from your iPhone microphone to your AirPods. Live Listen can help you hear better in some situations—for example, when having a conversation in a noisy environment. (Typically, headphone level monitoring and Live Listen aren’t used at the same time. The Headphone Level monitor is intended for listening to audio playback. Live Listen is intended for listening to external sounds with the iPhone microphone.) See Use iPhone as a remote microphone with Live Listen.

The data from headphone use appears in Health on the Headphone Audio Levels chart. If you listen to headphone audio for long enough at a volume that could affect your hearing, you can get a notification and have the volume automatically turned down to protect your hearing. See Track headphone and environmental sound-level exposure in Health on iPhone.

Tip: After you add Hearing to Control Center, you can open Control Center to view a small version of the sound meter on the Hearing Devices button without tapping it.

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