Have many apps available for iPhone users it is possible to play white noise such as crashing waves or light rain, but did you know that there is a white noise generator built directly into your iPhone? The lesser-known background sound feature is buried in the Accessibility section of your iPhone and offers a number of different sounds.
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How to enable the Hidden Background Noise feature on your iPhone
Turn on your iPhone’s ambient noise feature with just a few taps on your phone’s screen. You need an iPhone running iOS 15 or later — no other special equipment needed.
Find and open the Settings app on your iPhone.
Scroll down until you find accessibility and touch it.
You’ll have to scroll down a bit before you find it Sound/Picture right to buy.
Slide the switch next to Background sound to Above to immediately start playing the default rain sound. You can choose the type of audio you want to hear by selecting the Audio option, which will prompt your iPhone to download it on demand. You can also adjust the volume — which is set independently of your iPhone’s ringtone and music volume.
There’s also an option here to keep playing background audio even while you’re watching a video or listening to music.
At the bottom is a toggle that will tell your iPhone to stop playing background sounds as soon as your iPhone locks.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a way to set the iPhone’s background sound to the stopwatch?
You may have noticed in the Settings app there is no option to play a sound for a certain amount of time. Instead, the sound you choose will continue to play until you manually stop it. That is, unless, you turn on the option to stop playing sound when the phone is locked.
So if you want to listen to background sound for a certain amount of time, what do you do? Well, another workaround is to use the iPhone’s auto-lock feature as a temporary timer.
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return Setting application and then select Screen brightness then choose Auto lock. You will have options from 30 seconds to 5 minutes.
The options don’t provide the longest duration and may not be enough to help you fall asleep — but it’s better to let background noise play through the night; unless, of course, that’s what you like.
Is there an easier way to access and manage background sounds?
You don’t have to dig into the Settings app every time you want to control your background sound. Instead, use the Control Center by swiping down from the top-right corner of the screen and then tapping the hearing icon (the icon with the headset).
You can then play or pause, switch between different sounds, and control the volume of the background sound through a small pop-up window. Much easier.
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If the listening icon isn’t available in your Control Center, you’ll need to add it manually by going to Setting > Control Center and tap the green “+” icon next to Hearing Icon.
What about the background sound on the smart speaker?
You don’t have to use your iPhone to play background sounds. You can use one of many sleep/white noise Alexa skill on any one of these Amazon Echo speaker or smart display. Google’s Nest and Home smart speakers or displays have white noise built right into their core functionality, you just need to know voice command to activate it.
