With these apps you get the choice of up to 6 programs set by your fitter, plus 3 additional programs:
Cafe
Cinema & Theater
Group Conversation
I have not used these extra programs very much because I didn’t know what they were doing and I didn’t hear all that great an effect from them. However today in a medium noisy hall with multiple tables and lots of discussion, I gave them a try. I found that the Cafe setting worked better than the Noise/Party program, especially when I cut the volume back to about 5.
In any case somehow I fully closed my app, and then opened it back up again. I have found before that the phone is smart enough to read what the hearing aids are set to, and display that particular program. I was surprised to see that while I closed the app when the aids were set to Cafe, when it opened back up again, it was set to Automatic, but the microphone focus was set to about 45 deg toward the front. When I did the same with Cinema & Theater, it displayed Automatic again, but with about a 300 deg front focus. Then with Group Conversation it displayed 180 deg front focus.
So my conclusion is that all these three apps do is set the microphone to a prefixed focus setting. Perhaps they are doing more, but they certainly are changing the microphone focus.
Thought others might find this useful. If nothing else, it is a quick way to set the microphone focus.