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Thursday 30 March 2023 Dublin: 9°C
AP Photo/Richard Drew
# in one ear
There's a way to listen to music when only one headphone works
A faulty headphone shouldn’t stop you from properly hearing music.

SOMETIMES ONE OF your headphones will break. Whether it’s down to wear and tear or you just bought a cheap pair, you can be stuck with only one earbud working.

This can be annoying as the general standard for audio is stereo, which plays slightly different sounds through both ears. You can solve this by changing the audio quality from stereo to mono.

While mono loses some of the audio quality that you would usually have, you don’t lose certain sounds that might be specific to one ear.

That isn’t the only reason you would want to do this. Some people may suffer from hearing loss and can only listen to music or audio through one ear.

Whatever the reason for doing this, changing it is straightforward. On iPhone, this can be done in Accessibility. Go to Settings > General > Accessibility and scroll down to sound.

You’ll see a scroller allowing you to prioritise sound through the left or right ear. Above that is the Mono Audio option which you should switch on too.

Z Accessibility settings on iOS (left) and Android (right)

On Android, it will really depend on the type of device you use. Generally, you should be able to change this by going into Settings > Accessibility. Here you will see the Mono Audio option. Switching that on will ensure the full music and audio will play through one ear.

And if that fails, you can just download an app that would allow this. An app like Just One Ear can change the audio settings to mono but be warned, it can pump the volume up higher than usual so don’t be wearing them when you’re connecting the first time.

Read: The trusty headphone jack is approaching the end of its life >

Read: Google now has a true rival to Apple’s FaceTime, but it faces many challenges >

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