Tech bros unlock AirPods' hearing aid feature for grandma using the weirdest hack — and it worked

New technology often has the potential to improve a person's life significantly and make things easier. However, sometimes, the best features have a region lock or are available only in certain countries. This might be quite disappointing for people living outside that territory. Similarly, when Apple launched its AirPods Pro 2's hearing aid feature, it was unavailable in many countries, such as India. But even when certain restrictions were in place, a group of techies from India decided to overcome them so their grandma could use the feature. The tech friends Rithvik Vibhu, Rithwik Jayasimha and Arnav Bansal shared the details on their blog, Lagrange Point.

Jayasimha wrote about how after Apple dropped its iOS 18.1 update, he went with his dad to buy a pair of AirPods Pro 2 for his grandma, who has hearing difficulty. However, after buying them, he learned Apple has put a "region-locked" on its Hearing Aids feature. The feature is only available in the USA and some other countries. But it didn't dishearten him, as it started a new journey. He added, "This kickstarted a few days of fiddling and learning how Apple typically implements region-locked features, building a Faraday cage and running a small camp to enable the hearing aids features for the grandparents of folks in our circle."

Jayasimha shared how hearing aids cost anything from ₹50,000 ($590) to ₹800,000 ($9,470) in India, depending upon their correction ability. As AirPods Pro 2 costs less than the lower limit in the country, they become a perfect budget option as they can recover hearing up to 60dbHL. Jayasimha took to his X account, @thel3l, to update on how the unlocking of the geo lock was going.

He wrote, "After a stressful 24 hours trying to get the AirPods Pro's hearing aid features working in India (where it is not launching) for grandma, I'm accepting (temporary) defeat. Putting all this here in case it helps someone else progress." He continued in the thread, "As far as I can tell, there are three checks you need to bypass to get access to geo-restricted features: - Device region/timezone/language - Apple Store region - GPS & IP based location And to enable the Hearing Aid feature: - Airpods must be >=7B19 - iOS >= 18.1."

In another update, he shared how unlocking the feature involved building a Faraday cage so the device wouldn't pick up on WiFi signals and report the activity. He, along with his friends, achieved it through a leaky microwave and an elaborate setup. Jayasimha further shared, "At first, we thought it would be easy—spoof IP location with a VPN, maybe rewrite some requests in a proxy, how hard could it be?" He went on, "Turns out that Apple checks a number of things, including GPS, country codes of the cellular network the devices is connected to and also—WiFi networks Turns out that your device locates you by searching a massive database that maps WiFi SSIDs around you to a known locations."

"We picked a WiFi-only iPad because it reduced variables: we would not have to worry about Cellular and GPS All we had to do was somehow spoof WiFi SSIDs while blocking out the ones in our neighborhood," Jayasimha recounted. "We briefly considered driving out somewhere remote, like a farm, where there would be no WiFi. But then we realized it'd be cool to build a Faraday cage, a device that blocks out electromagnetic radiation—including cellular, GPS and WiFi signals," per the thread. They thought of using a microwave as a Faraday cage, but it was leaky. Nonetheless, it turned out to be an excellent jammer. They built the Faraday cage from aluminum foil instead, the techie shared.

He shared, "At the end of all this, we were able to enable the Hearing Aids feature for my grandma's AirPods and that of several friends. They work great!" People were quite impressed by the work. @sthottempudi wrote, "Great stuff!! This is public service." @manuch commented, "Cool stuff! I just hope it won't disable itself again after a few weeks. For example, the EU-only third-party app stores stop working 3-4 weeks after it notices you're not in the EU anymore." @arnemolland claimed, "I got around the geo block for this and Apple Intelligence just by changing my device region in the settings."