FAQ & Support
What does Tinnitus Haven do?
It gives you four things for living more easily with tinnitus:
- Sound therapy: sounds you can shape and listen to, which many people find make the ringing feel less prominent.
- A hearing and tinnitus self-test: a rough picture of your hearing, and a way to match the pitch and loudness of your own tinnitus.
- Guided mindfulness: short sessions for winding down and for the moments when the noise takes over.
- A CBT-style programme: structured lessons and exercises based on the ideas behind cognitive behavioural therapy, which may help you change how you react to the sound. You find it in the Mindfulness tab, under “Calm Mind”.
What does it not do?
It does not diagnose anything, it does not treat or cure tinnitus, and it is not a medical device. It cannot tell you why you have tinnitus, and it is not a substitute for an audiologist or a doctor. What you enter and measure is stored on your iPhone. Unless you switch them off, usage statistics (including the numeric results of tests, questionnaires and check-ins) and crash reports are sent to Google Firebase; your journal, notes and anything else you type never are.
When should I see a doctor instead?
Please book an appointment promptly, without waiting for the app, if:
- your hearing dropped suddenly, over hours or days;
- the sound is in one ear only, or is much louder in one ear;
- it pulses in time with your heartbeat;
- it comes with dizziness or balance problems, ear pain, discharge, or weakness on one side of the face;
- it started after a head injury, or after starting a new medicine.
These can point to something treatable that needs attention now.
Why do I need headphones for the test?
Three reasons. The test plays a separate tone to each ear, and speakers cannot keep them apart: you would hear both ears' tones with both ears. Room echo and background noise change what reaches your eardrum, and headphones shut most of that out. And the volume levels the app works with only mean anything close to your ear.
Use ordinary wired or wireless earphones or headphones, keep both ears covered, and stay in a quiet room. Do not swap or adjust them halfway through, and use the same ones each time if you want to compare results.
Why is the test called a screening tool and not a diagnosis?
A clinical audiogram is done in a sound-treated booth, with calibrated equipment, by a trained professional who also looks in your ears and interprets the result in the context of your history. The app has none of that. It runs on whatever earphones you own, in whatever room you are in, using iOS's volume scale, which is not calibrated in decibels of hearing level.
So the app can suggest that something is worth having checked, and it can track how you feel over time. It cannot tell you that you have hearing loss, how severe it is, or what is causing it. Only a clinician can.
How accurate is it, then?
The test is a relative screening: it is calibrated to your own comfort level on your own earphones, not to the reference levels of a clinical audiometer. Its numbers therefore cannot be compared directly with a clinical audiogram, and we make no claim about how closely they match one. Unusual earphones, a poor seal or a noisy room make the result less reliable. What it can show is a pattern (such as one ear behaving differently from the other, or high frequencies being weaker) and how that pattern changes over time. It is not a medical result.
To get the best out of it: quiet room, both earphones on properly, no multitasking, and take the test in the same conditions each time.
Is it safe for my ears?
It is, if you keep the volume sensible. Start low and raise it only as far as you actually need. Never push the volume to a level that is uncomfortable, painful or makes your tinnitus worse, and take breaks rather than listening loudly for hours. Stop and speak to a clinician if a sound causes pain, dizziness or a lasting increase in your symptoms. If you wear a hearing aid or a cochlear implant, ask your audiologist before using the tone-based features.
Why does the app ask for the microphone?
For one thing only: to measure how loud your room is before a hearing test, so it can tell you if it is too noisy for the result to mean anything. The level is measured live on the device. No audio is recorded, saved or transmitted. You can refuse or revoke the permission in iOS Settings; everything else keeps working.
Does it work offline? Where is my data?
Almost everything works offline. You need a connection only to download a guided recording (a mindfulness session or a CBT audio lesson) the first time you play it, and for purchases, which go through Apple. There are no accounts, no sign-in and no server of ours. Your test results, journal entries, questionnaire answers and check-ins are stored on your iPhone, encrypted at rest by iOS Data Protection; the app can read them once you have unlocked the device after it starts. Nothing you write, whether journal text or notes, is ever uploaded.
What does leave the device is usage statistics and crash reports, sent to Google Firebase to help us see which features are used and fix bugs. They carry no name, email, journal text or audio. They do contain which screens and features are used, the numeric results of tests, questionnaires and daily check-ins, and technical crash details. All of it is tied to a random device identifier that stays the same if you reinstall the app, so the data is pseudonymous rather than anonymous. You can switch both off under Settings → Privacy & Data (“Help improve the app” and “Send crash reports”). When a guided recording is downloaded, the server hosting it also sees your device's IP address, as with any download. Details are in the Privacy Policy.
What does the subscription cost, and what do I get?
Tinnitus Haven Premium is USD 6.99 per month or USD 59.99 per year, auto-renewing. There is no free trial. In your country Apple charges the equivalent price for your App Store storefront; the price shown before you confirm is the one you pay. The full conditions are in the Terms of Use.
How do I cancel?
Subscriptions are managed by Apple, not by us, so cancel them in iOS:
- Open Settings on your iPhone.
- Tap your name at the top, then Subscriptions.
- Tap Tinnitus Haven, then Cancel Subscription.
Cancel at least 24 hours before the current period ends, or Apple will charge the next one. After cancelling you keep Premium until the end of the period you have already paid for. Deleting the app does not cancel the subscription.
How do I get a refund?
Apple handles all App Store refunds; we have no access to the transaction and cannot issue one. Request it at reportaproblem.apple.com, sign in with your Apple account, choose the purchase and say what went wrong. Your statutory consumer rights are unaffected.
I bought Premium but it is not showing / I have a new iPhone
Make sure you are signed in with the same Apple account you bought it with, then open the Premium screen in the app and tap Restore Purchases. Your subscription follows your Apple account, so it moves to a new device, but your on-device content does not travel by itself. The simplest way is an iPhone backup: back up the old iPhone and restore that backup onto the new one before you wipe the old device. With Premium you can also export your data from Settings → Privacy & Data and keep a copy.
How do I export or delete my data?
Both live in the app under Settings → Privacy & Data.
- Export is part of Premium. It saves a copy of everything stored on your device as a JSON file.
- Delete all data is free for everyone. It erases everything permanently. It cannot be undone, and we cannot recover it, so the app asks you to type DELETE to confirm.
Removing the app from your iPhone also removes everything it stored except the random device identifier used for usage statistics, which iOS keeps in the Keychain (see the Privacy Policy). Neither action cancels a subscription; do that separately, as described above.
What devices and languages does it support?
iPhone running iOS 18 or later. The app is available in English, Turkish and German and follows your iPhone's language setting.
How do I get support?
Email info@tinnitushaven.com. The app can also open a pre-filled support email from Settings → Help, which includes a short technical line (your app version, iOS version and device model) and no personal information. Telling us what you did, what you expected and what happened instead gets you a useful answer fastest. We answer support emails; the feedback form inside the app is read too, but we cannot reply to it individually. If you need an answer, write to us by email.
Please note we cannot give medical advice or interpret your results. For that, see an audiologist or your doctor.