More than 60 million Americans over age 12 have some level of hearing loss.1 Losing your hearing can be inconvenient, and frustrating. It may even lead to isolation, which can contribute to cognitive decline.2 Luckily, as with most things, there’s an app for that — an app for living your best life with hearing loss, that is!

Let’s take a look at 12 of the best smartphone apps for hearing loss. Many are great for Deaf individuals too.

Included here:

CaptionCall Mobile  |  Live Transcribe  |  Live Transcribe and Notification  | Talk to Deaf  |  Sound Amplifier (iPhone)  |  Sound Amplifier (Android)  | Subtitles Viewer! (iPhone)  |  AudioCardio Hearing & Tinnitus  |  Shazam: Music Discovery

1. CaptionCall Mobile call-captioning app

Cost: $0 if you self-certify that you have hearing loss and need captioned calls to effectively use the phone, the cost of captioning is covered by federal funds. The service is unavailable otherwise.

If you have hearing loss and need captions to understand phone calls,  CaptionCall offers two great options for connecting to our call-captioning service. One is a specially made home phone with a screen that shows captions. The other is a mobile app that turns your smartphone into a captioning screen.  CaptionCall offers both services at no cost and requires only that you self-certify you have hearing loss and need captions to effectively use the phone.

Captioned calls work like closed captions on your TV. A captioning service converts spoken words into captions or text that appear on your phone’s screen in real time, so you can read along and keep up with the conversation.

CaptionCall Mobile captions calls using speech-recognition technology. It displays the captions on your mobile phone screen instantly. This is different than using the built-in captioning on your phone. It gives you faster, more accurate captions.

Of the available mobile captioning apps, CaptionCall Mobile is our favorite, not because it’s a Sorenson product, but because it works in real-time. There’s no lag or delay between what your caller says and seeing the caption text on your phone screen

Rating on Google Play

4 out of 5 stars

Rating on Apple App Store

4.8 out of 5 stars

Get CaptionCall Mobile for your mobile phone

2. Live Transcribe

Cost: Free basic version, optional monthly subscription for more features

Live Transcribe from Mighty Fine Apps is one of the best apps available for Deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals. It transcribes voice to text for any speech in range of your phone’s microphone. You can even set it to start transcribing the moment you open the app.

One advantage compared to a standard transcription app is that it lets you make the text as big as you want. You can even have the text fill the entire screen. It also offers captions in more than 70 languages and even lets you filter out profanity.

You can also save transcripts of conversations to a messaging app or note-taking app on your phone.

A small disadvantage of Live Transcribe is that it’s only available for iOS.

Rating on Apple App Store

4.6 out of 5 stars

Download from the App Store

3. Live Transcribe and Notification

Cost: Free

Live Transcribe and Notification from Research at Google gives you both live transcriptions of spoken conversation and sound notifications.

Live Transcribe turns spoken conversation into fairly accurate written captions in real-time and supports more than 70 languages.

Unique features include the ability to add your own frequently used words, such as names and household items. You can also use it to set your smartphone to vibrate when someone says your name.

Unlike Live Transcribe above, Google’s version doesn’t automatically save transcripts, but it does give you the option to save them manually. It will also only save them for three days. To keep them longer, you can copy and paste them into another program.

The notifications part of Live Transcribe and Notifications lets you choose custom sounds, flashing lights, or vibration mode to alert you to stove timers, smoke alarms, baby monitors, sirens, and more.

Rating on Google Play

3.8 out of 5 stars

Install from Google Play

4. Talk to deaf for Android

Cost: $6.99 annually

If you don’t want or need notifications, Talk to deaf from Kickdata is a good option. It does come at an annual cost of $6.99 but has a solid 4.1 average rating.

Talk to Deaf quickly translates spoken language into text displayed on your phone screen. You can customize the font and size for easier reading. You also have the option to save your conversation history.

A disadvantage of this app — or maybe a benefit depending on your needs — is that you must press the microphone button to capture speech.

Rating from Google Play

4.1 out of 5 stars

Install from Google Play

5. Sound Amplifier

Cost: Free

Another app from Mighty Fine Apps, Sound Amplifier boosts the volume on your surroundings.

This app uses your phone’s microphone to pick up sounds and increase the volume up to 100x through your connected headphones, while also minimizing background noise and taking advantage of its voice isolation feature.

Use it to amplify conversations, TV shows, movies, lectures, and more. While this app packs a serious punch, its built-in loudness protect feature still protects your ears by preventing the volume from getting dangerously high.

One disadvantage: this Sound Amplifier app is available only for iOS.

Rating on Apple App Store

4.6 out of 5 stars

Download from the App Store

6. Sound Amplifier

Cost: Free

This is Google’s take on the Sound Amplifier app. Just like other sound amplification apps on this list, Sound Amplifier uses your device’s built-in microphone to pick up sounds in your environment, then filters, augments, and amplifies them through your connected headphones.

Sound Amplifier doesn’t just turn up the volume on all noises — you can personalize your listening experience by boosting low frequencies, low frequencies, or even quiet sounds. It can help you enjoy everything from conversations and lectures to movies, TV shows, and plays.

If you have a compatible device, the app’s Conversation Mode can focus in on a speaker’s voice for even clearer sound.

Sound Amplifier is only available for phones running Android 8.1 or later.

Rating on Google Play

3.7 out of 5 stars

Install from Google Play

7. Subtitles Viewer! for iPhone

Cost: 3 free subtitles, more than 3 requires credits acquired through in-app purchases

Subtitles Viewer! by Craig Grummitt turns your iPhone or iPad into a personal subtitles screen. The app loads subtitles from a large database of crowdsourced subtitles and syncs with the action on your TV screen or even at the movie theater.

Rating on Apple App Store

4.4 out of 5 stars

Download from App Store

8. AudioCardio Hearing & Tinnitus

Cost: Free trial, basic plan for $9.99, or Pro+ plan for $14.99 a month, $64.99 every 6 months, or $99.99 annually.

AudioCardio Hearing and Tinnitus from AudioCardio is one of the apps we mention in our post on improving hearing loss naturally. It is a unique app that may help some users improve their hearing.

The app offers personalized sound therapy based on a hearing test you take when you open your account. AudioCardio then uses these results to develop daily one-hour sound therapy sessions for both of your ears. Sticking to the schedule and using it every day may help protect your hearing.

According to the app’s description, its technology is clinically proven by researchers — including Stanford University.

Rating on Google Play

3.2 out of 5 stars

Download from Google Play Store

Rating on Apple App Store

4.3 out of 5 stars

Download from the App Store

9.  Shazam: Find Music & Concerts

Cost: Free

Shazam is a popular music-discovery app designed to help you identify music you might hear in your everyday life. Whenever you hear a song that you’ve never heard before or can’t quite place, pull up Shazam and it’ll use your phone’s microphone to listen to the music and identify the song.

Not only is it great for finding and remembering new music, but it can help you enjoy your old favorites, too.  If hearing loss makes it hard to understand the lyrics of the music you love, this app displays the lyrics of all your favorite songs while you listen. You’ll never miss out on the joy of music — or singing along — again.

Rating on the Google Play

4.8 out of 5 stars

Download from Google Play Store

Rating on Apple App Store

4.9 out of 5 stars

Download from the App Store

Sources

1. Hearing Loss Statistics 2025: More Common Than You Might Think
2. https://www.ncoa.org/adviser/hearing-aids/hearing-loss-statistics/
3. Hearing Loss and Cognition: What We Know and Where We Need to Go - PMC
4. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8920093/