Relaxing Background Sounds, Built In

If you go under Accessibility / Audio on macOS, or Accessibility / Audio and Visual on iOS or iPadOS, the operating system has built-in background sounds. The 26 release expands the options, offering up the following gamut of choices-

• Balanced Noise
• Bright Noise
• Dark Noise
• Ocean
• Rain
• Stream
• Night
• Fire
• Babble
• Steam
• Boat
• Bus
• Train
• Rain On Roof
• Quiet Night

More than half of these are new with the 26 release.

They aren’t all winners, but in a pinch they’re a great way to camouflage background noises. They’re especially potent when used in conjunction with a ANR headset.

It is notable that the macOS implementation offers the ability to choose to download higher quality versions, but that function seems to be broken currently. In normal operations when you download the higher quality option the icon will change to a wastebasket for when you might want to delete the local copy, but that doesn’t currently function. This might explain why some options loop too quickly and have clear repeating patterns. For instance “babble” is not great on macOS, where it’s excellent on the mobile variants. That will get sorted at some point.