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Comment by adiabatty | Hacker News Reader

If you’d rather not buy another gizmo for a function your phone has likely gobbled up already…

iOS, iPadOS, and macOS have a pretty great built-in background-noise generator these days. While lots of actual beaches can go dead silent and then have a loud wave crash in, the waves that

It’s available in Settings -> Accessibility -> Audio & Visual -> Background Sounds. You’ll have to download the sounds each once, but after that they stay on your device.

Digging this deeply in Settings isn’t pleasant if you just want some white noise, so you may want to add a control to Control Center like “Background Sounds” (way down in the Hearing Accessibility section) to turn the ocean noise on and off.

I turn this on my iPad when going to bed if I want to take extra steps to ensure that I don’t wake up in the middle of the night.

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You can also assign it to the triple click shortcut in Accessibility. You probably can to the double/triple back taps too, though I haven’t tried.

I do use a standalone Lectrofan for sleep as I prefer my noise machine to be across the room and Alexa-controlled (via a smart switch), plus it’s louder and the brown noise is “browner.”

But I keep iOS BG sound mapped to the triple-click shortcut for when noise-cancelling just isn’t enough in loud restaurants etc. It works great with AirPods for reducing my noise sensitivity issues.

I tried it but I don't want my phone near the bed or even in the room. A simple, standalone machine is perfect. Same thing with my 2002 Sony Dream Machine alarm clock.

If you're trying to get better sleep, get your phone as far away as possible!

:facepalm:

I can't believe I had to download an app for that because the feature is buried in SETTINGS (!!!!). What an obtuse choice. Thanks for the tip though, I hate that my white noise app has a rotating ad banner.

It's been life-changing when combined with my AirPods Pro. ANC deadens most sound, but acute sounds still get through. Adding background noise on top of it can usually cover the rest. And they have both bright and dark noise, to cover different frequencies of environmental sounds

just tried it, that's cool, but in what circumstances "should" i use it?

I find it pretty useful at work when I want to focus and can't with music.

Be careful with that. Research shows that long term extended white noise listening damages hearing and can reduce your ability to process sounds. Don't get into the habit of using it all the time

i'm glad i wasn't the only one to mention this

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43146228

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