Most Phonak hearing aids can be adjusted in three ways: through the myPhonak app on your smartphone, through the automatic sound system built into the hearing aids themselves, and through your audiologist using professional software. The app gives you the most day-to-day control, letting you fine-tune volume, sound quality, noise reduction, and more without a clinic visit.
What You Can Adjust in the myPhonak App
The myPhonak app is your main tool for making real-time changes. Once your hearing aids are paired to your phone, you can control several settings from the home screen.
Volume is the most basic adjustment. A single slider raises or lowers volume for both hearing aids at once. If you want to adjust each ear independently, tap the split icon to get separate left and right sliders. This is useful if one ear needs more amplification than the other in a given moment.
Equalizer lets you shape the tone of what you hear by adjusting three frequency bands: bass, middle, and treble. If voices sound muddy, try raising the treble. If sounds feel harsh or tinny, bringing up the bass can warm things out. These adjustments are small but noticeable, especially in environments you spend a lot of time in.
Noise reduction dials background noise up or down. In a noisy restaurant, increasing noise reduction can make conversation easier. In a quiet park where you want to hear birds and ambient sounds, you might lower it.
Speech focus controls how directional your microphones are. You can set them to pick up sound from directly in front of you (helpful for one-on-one conversations) or widen the pickup to capture your full surroundings.
Dynamics adjusts the range between soft and loud sounds. You can compress loud sounds so they’re less startling, or boost soft sounds so you catch quieter speech. This is particularly helpful in environments with unpredictable volume swings.
Ambient balance applies when you’re streaming audio from a phone call or music. It controls the mix between the streamed audio and the environmental sounds around you, so you can decide how much of the outside world you still want to hear while listening to a podcast or taking a call.
If your audiologist has enabled a tinnitus noiser program, the app also includes a dedicated slider for adjusting the volume of the masking sound.
How to Save Custom Programs
Once you’ve dialed in settings that work well for a specific situation, you don’t have to recreate them every time. The app lets you save any combination of adjustments as a custom program. Here’s the process:
- Select the program you want to start from
- Tap “Adjust program”
- Make your changes to volume, equalizer, noise reduction, or any other setting
- Tap “Save as new”
- Name your custom program (something like “Noisy restaurant” or “Office meeting”) and tap “Save”
Your saved program appears in the program list on the app’s home screen. You can create several of these for different environments and switch between them with a single tap. Over time, building a library of custom programs means you spend less time fiddling with individual sliders.
How AutoSense Adjusts Settings Automatically
Phonak hearing aids from the Venture platform onward include a system called AutoSense OS, which classifies the sound environment around you and adjusts settings without any input on your part. The system distinguishes between seven different sound classes and responds by changing microphone directionality, compression levels, and noise reduction in real time.
In practice, this means your hearing aids are already shifting their behavior as you walk from a quiet room into a busy street or sit down in a restaurant. The automatic system runs constantly in the background, and for many people it handles everyday transitions well enough that manual adjustments are only needed in unusual or particularly challenging listening situations. Any manual changes you make through the app override the automatic settings temporarily.
Physical Controls on the Hearing Aids
Depending on your model, you may have a small button on the hearing aid itself for switching between programs or adjusting volume. Newer rechargeable models from the Paradise line onward also support tap control, where you double-tap the hearing aid to accept or end a phone call, pause or resume audio streaming, or activate your phone’s voice assistant. You can customize which actions the tap gesture triggers through the myPhonak app.
On Lumity hearing aids and newer, there’s an additional option called QuickSync. When enabled, changing the volume on one hearing aid automatically matches the other. If you prefer to control each side independently, your audiologist can disable QuickSync, or you can use the split volume feature in the app.
Adjustments That Require Your Audiologist
The app gives you meaningful control, but the deeper programming happens through professional software called Phonak Target (currently version 11.2). This is what your audiologist uses to set your hearing aid’s prescription based on your audiogram, adjust maximum output levels, fine-tune frequency channels beyond what the app exposes, and run feedback management tests. These foundational settings determine the range within which your app adjustments operate.
If your audiologist offers remote support, you can get some of these professional-level adjustments without visiting the clinic. Your hearing aids need to be initially fitted in person, but after that first appointment, your audiologist can activate remote fitting. During a remote session, you connect through the myPhonak app, both of you join a video call, and your audiologist makes real-time changes to your programming while you describe what you’re hearing. Make sure your hearing aids are fully charged or have fresh batteries before starting a session, since the connection draws extra power.
Fixing Common Problems Yourself
Whistling or feedback is the most common issue people try to fix on their own. Before adjusting any settings, check the basics: make sure the hearing aid is seated properly in your ear. A loose fit is the most frequent cause of feedback. If the hearing aid seems correctly placed but still whistles, earwax buildup in your ear canal could be redirecting sound back toward the microphone. A doctor can check and clean your ears if needed.
If sounds feel generally off, try resetting your app adjustments back to the default program before making new changes. Sometimes stacking small tweaks over time creates a combination that doesn’t work well together. Starting fresh from your audiologist’s base settings gives you a clean slate. If the problem persists after resetting, it’s likely something that needs a professional adjustment in Phonak Target rather than an app-level fix.
For sound that’s too sharp in specific situations, lower the treble in the equalizer. For speech that’s hard to understand in noise, increase speech focus and noise reduction together. These two adjustments in combination tend to have a bigger effect than either one alone.