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Lost a hearing aid outside? Search before you replace it.

A hearing aid is small, the colour of skin or hair, and almost never where you think it is.

It is usually close to where it came off. The problem is that you cannot see it from standing height, and the first look is always done standing up.

1. The first ten minutes

In this order. The first two matter most while you can still account for the last hour.

  1. 1

    Stop walking

    Every extra minute of wandering makes the area somebody has to search larger.

  2. 2

    Open the app, if your aids pair to a phone

    Most hearing aid apps can show where the phone and the aid were last in contact. Read what yours actually says, because some show a location and some only a connection.

  3. 3

    Retrace what came off your head

    A jumper, a hood, a hat, a face mask, a helmet, a pair of glasses, a towel. That is how nearly all of them go.

  4. 4

    Mark the spot before you search it

    A bag, a stick, a photo with something fixed in shot. By tomorrow you will remember a bigger patch than it really was.

The area somebody will have to search

Marked where you stood

A few paces across, and it stays that size while you fetch help.

Went looking for it first

Every minute of walking adds ground nobody can rule out later.

2. What the app is really telling you

A finder in a hearing aid app works over Bluetooth, and Bluetooth needs both ends switched on and close together. What it shows you afterwards is the last place the two were in contact. That is a record of a moment, not a live position.

If you were walking when it fell, the pin can be a long way from the aid. Treat it as the centre of a circle rather than a cross on a map.

It also stops helping when the power does. A disposable cell or a charge that was already half spent gives you hours, not weeks. Today is the day the app can still help you. Tomorrow it is a small piece of plastic in the grass, and that is a different search.

3. Where they actually come off

Hearing aids are not dropped so much as pulled off, and almost always by something passing over the ear.

The moment it happened

  • A jumper or hoodie coming over your head
  • Taking off a hat, a cap or a hood
  • A face mask, lifted off by the ear loops
  • A cycling or ski helmet going on or off
  • Wiping rain or sweat off your face
  • Getting out of the car, past the door frame

Where it ends up

  • In the grass at the kerb by the driver's door
  • On the path or the doormat, a step from the door
  • Inside your own collar, a sleeve or a hood
  • In the seat crease or the footwell of the car
  • In the leaf litter at the edge of a path
  • Within a few metres of a gate or a stile

Clear the indoor traps before you spend an afternoon on a field: the seat crease, the laundry basket, the bedding, and the vacuum bag if anyone has hoovered since.

4. Going over the ground properly

This is where most of them are found, and it is genuinely a different search from the one you have already done. The first look is done standing up, in a hurry and usually in poor light.

How to cover a lawn without losing your place

1. Strips one way, about an arm span wide

2. Then the whole thing again, across

Low sun, early or late, and grass still wet with dew. Kneel rather than stand — from standing height you are looking at the tops of the blades, not the ground.

  1. Get down on your knees. From standing height you are looking at the tops of the grass. The aid is underneath them.
  2. Work in strips about an arm span wide, and mark each strip as you finish it, or you will search one of them twice and one of them never.
  3. Use light at a low angle. Early or late sun, or a torch held near the ground after dark. A plastic shell and a clear tube throw back a shine that light from overhead does not.
  4. Then do the whole area again, across your own tracks. The second pass catches what the first angle hid.
  5. Do not rake or mow it first. Raking pushes it down into the thatch, and a mower moves it out of the area you were searching.

It will not have sunk. In a lawn it drops between the blades and stops on the layer of dead stems underneath, which is the same place a ring stops.

Where the ring actually is
1–3 cm

Everything you can see from standing height stops at the dotted line.

Thatch — dead stems between the grass and the soil. The ring drops through the blades and stops here.

Not buried. Lying on the ground, under an inch of grass.

5. Can a metal detector find a hearing aid?

Sometimes. Here is the honest version.

A hearing aid is mostly plastic. What a detector has to answer to is the little metal inside it: the magnet in the receiver, the battery and its contacts, the wire. That is a small target that conducts poorly, so it reads faintly and only when the coil is close.

How loudly each ring answers
Gold ringTitanium ring

Keep the coil low. Held at knee height it hears a gold ring and misses this one.

Sweep slowly. A faint target under a fast coil is a target that never sounds at all.

Dig the quiet ones. This ring sits among the tones most people learn to walk past.

So this is not the certainty a gold ring is. It is found by somebody sweeping slowly with the coil flat to the grass, who decided before starting that they would dig the quiet signals. Swung fast at knee height, a machine goes straight past it.

Which is also the argument against hiring a machine for the afternoon. A borrowed detector is an instrument you have never heard before, and this is close to the hardest thing you could ask it to tell you about. Renting one against asking somebody who owns one goes the second way for a target this quiet.

How the machine is set decides most of it. Discrimination, the setting that filters out bottle caps and foil, filters out a hearing aid along with them. The people who recover them run the detector wide open in all-metal, sweep slowly with the coil flat to the ground, and carry a pinpointer for the last hand's width, which is where a signal this quiet turns into a find.

6. If it went into water, mud or gravel

Water is likely the end of the electronics, but it is not a reason to stop looking. An aid that comes back can at least be assessed, and the mould that was made for your ear is yours. In a stream or shallow lake it usually stays near where it landed unless the bottom is soft silt.

In mud, gravel or bark chippings, what beats a detector is a sieve and patience over a small, well-defined patch. Which is one more reason to mark the spot while you still know where it is.

What not to do

  • Do not mow, strim or rake the area first. A mower does not destroy it. It moves it somewhere nobody has thought to look.
  • Do not empty the vacuum, the grass box or the bin until somebody has been through them.
  • Do not count on a magnet. There is a magnet inside the receiver, but it is tiny. A magnet on a string collects nails and walks past the aid.
  • Do not reorder or claim before you have searched properly. One slow pass on your knees in low light finds a surprising number of them, and it costs you an hour.
  • Do not assume both went at once. One aid coming out is the ordinary case. Search as though one is missing, because one is.
Where Retrievly comes in

If you have been over the ground twice on your knees and it is not there, the next step is somebody with a detector who is willing to dig quiet signals. A hearing aid is a demanding target and a fair job for somebody who knows their own machine well.

Retrievly is where you post that. You describe roughly where it happened and what is missing, and people nearby with detectors can offer to come and look. We are new, so there may be nobody signed up near you yet. When that happens we go out and look for somebody in your area rather than leaving your request sitting there.

Your exact spot stays yours

The exact spot stays yours. Anyone browsing sees a rough area of about five kilometres, never the address or the pin. Only the person you choose is told where to come, and you arrange the meeting directly with them.

For now, it costs you nothing

Retrievly is free at the moment. No fee, no commission, nothing to cancel. No money goes through Retrievly either: if you want to thank whoever finds it, that is arranged between the two of you.

Two things said straight. We do not check or vet the people who offer, so read the profile and meet them at the spot yourself. And a hearing aid is a quiet, awkward target for a detector. A search is a fair chance, never a promise.

Post a request

Browsing needs no account. You only sign in to post.

Common questions
Can a metal detector find a hearing aid?
Sometimes. A hearing aid is mostly plastic, and what a detector answers to is the magnet in the receiver, the battery and the contacts. That is a small target that conducts poorly, so it sounds faint and only when the coil is close. It is found by somebody sweeping slowly with the coil flat to the ground who is willing to dig quiet signals, and missed by anybody in a hurry.
I lost a hearing aid in the grass. How deep will it be?
It will not have sunk. It falls between the blades and stops on the layer of dead stems beneath them, on the soil rather than in it. That makes it invisible from standing height and still on the surface, which is why raking or mowing before you search is the one mistake that cannot be undone.
Does the app still find it when the battery is dead?
No. A finder in a hearing aid app works over Bluetooth and needs the aid powered on. Once it is flat you are left with the last recorded location, which is where your phone and the aid were last in contact rather than where the aid is now.
Where do hearing aids get lost most often?
Wherever something passes over the ear. Pulling off a jumper or a hood, taking off a hat or a helmet, removing a face mask by the ear loops, and getting out of a car. Start with the last of those you did rather than with the place you noticed it was gone.
Should I claim on the insurance straight away?
Search properly first. The first look is done standing up and in a hurry, and from standing height you are looking at the tops of the grass rather than the ground. An hour on your knees in low light, in strips, is a different search. Do that before you start anything you cannot undo.
Is it worth searching if only one is missing?
Yes, and one is usually all that is missing. A single aid is expensive to replace on its own, and a matched pair is worth more to you than two that were fitted years apart.
Who writes this

Kenny built Retrievly. He has snorkelled the Danube for years and keeps bringing up things that belong to other people: wallets with the ID still in them, phones, keys. That is where Retrievly came from.

Lost a Hearing Aid Outside? What to Do First | Retrievly