Use the hearing check

The Hearing check under Your ears plays quiet tones to one ear at a time and notes when you hear them. It shows how your two ears compare with each other, and — once you have checked before on the same kind of headphones — how they changed since then. It is not scored and has no mastery bar.

Before the tones

The check asks three things first. You can't skip them — only answer them.

1. Loud sound in the last 48 hours? A show, a rehearsal or a club can dull your hearing for a day or two (a temporary threshold shift). A check then looks worse than your ears really are and makes a poor baseline. If you answer yes, the check suggests coming back after two quiet days. You can continue anyway; the result is then marked "within 48 h of loud exposure".
2. Wired or Bluetooth headphones? Many Bluetooth links cut off everything above about 14–17 kHz, so the highest tone you hear shows the link, not your ears. Bluetooth results are marked, and changes are only compared with checks on the same kind of headphones. Speakers don't work: each tone must reach one ear only.
3. Set your volume against this sound. Press Play reference tone: short 1 kHz beeps in both ears, 40 dB below full scale. Set your device volume so they are faint but clearly audible, then press It’s faint but clear — start the check and don't touch the volume until the end.

Stop if any tone is uncomfortable. The Stop button works at every step; a stopped check saves nothing.

The tones

1. The screen shows which ear is playing. A tone starts inaudibly quiet and rises slowly — press I hear it as soon as you notice it.
2. Hear nothing? Just wait. The tone rises to at most 30 dB below full scale (10 dB above the reference you set), stays there for two seconds, then stops by itself and counts as not heard.
3. Eight frequencies from 250 Hz to 8 kHz play per ear, in random order. A few trials are silent on purpose: pressing then tells the check that responses may not be reliable.
4. Then come the high tones: very high beeps step down in pitch from about 20 kHz to 8 kHz, at the same capped level. Press as soon as you hear one; each step stops by itself after four seconds.

The whole check takes about four minutes. If you switch to another tab or app, the sound stops at once, and the same step starts again from quiet when you come back.

Reading the result

• Left vs right, per frequency: "About the same" when the ears are within 5 dB of each other, otherwise which ear needed the tone louder and by how much. "Only the right ear heard it" means the left ear didn't hear it at all.
• Change since your last check with the same kind of headphones, per ear: "needed 6 dB more" means that ear only heard the tone once it was 6 dB louder than last time. If both ears moved by about the same amount everywhere, the volume setting probably differed.
• Highest tone heard, per ear, on this setup. If it says "not heard", not even the 8 kHz step was heard: check your headphones, and if they're fine, see an audiologist.
• A red box appears when your ears differ by 10 dB or more at two or more frequencies, or when one ear needed 10 dB or more at two or more frequencies compared with last time. It says: see a doctor promptly if one ear is clearly worse, or you notice a sudden change or ringing.
• A loud tone in one ear can reach the other ear through your head, so a big difference between your ears can look smaller here than it really is.
• Levels (folded away) show how far below full scale each tone was when you heard it — "dB below full scale", not dB HL. They depend on your volume and headphones; don't compare them with anyone else's.
• Export PNG saves a picture of the left–right difference per frequency.

There is no score. A browser can't know how loud your headphones really are, so a number out of 100 would only pretend.

Your last check

The check keeps your last twelve results on this device. When you open it again, it shows Your last check with the date, the headphones and any marks; Check again starts a new one. Results from the old hearing test (with the 0–100 score) can't be compared with the new check and are not shown.