Just need a little distance from the world and the constant cacophony of noise? Relaxing sounds are a great way to get away from it all, and your iPhone will soon be able to play a collection of different noises to help you shut out the wider world. Well, once iOS 15 is here, anyway.
Hidden away in the Accessibility option of your iOS 15 iPhone is an option called Background Sound — and it contains a number of different, relaxing sounds, including rainfall, white noise, and the sounds of the ocean waves. These can plan over other music or podcasts, making them truly background sounds. So, whether you’re looking to relax or just fancy listening to a different background sound, here’s how to use background sounds in iOS 15.
But before we start, it’s worth pointing out that this feature is currently only available in iOS 15, which hasn’t been released yet. So, most of us will have to wait before we’re able to sample this new feature. However, if you’re the adventurous sort, you can download the iOS 15 public beta to give it a try. Or, check out our list of the best meditation apps, which often offer similar soundscape experiences.
How to use Background Sounds in iOS 15
Background Sounds is actually fairly well hidden away in iOS 15’s Settings menu, and you might not have found it unless you’re the type of person to check out Accessibility options. However, it’s still not hard to find once you know where it is.
Step one: Open your Settings app and scroll down until you find Accessibility.
Step two: Tap Accessibility > Audio/Visual > Background Sounds.
Step three: Tap the Background Sounds slider to turn on a constant background sound.
But that’s just the beginning, really. Head to Sound to choose which sound you’d prefer to hear. The sounds you can pick from are as follows:
- Balanced Noise: This is a mix of higher and lower frequency white noise. Your standard white noise.
- Bright Noise: Higher-frequency white noise.
- Dark Noise: Lower-frequency white noise.
- Ocean: Ocean waves for that relaxing-on-a-sun-kissed-beach feel.
- Rain: For whenever the constant drum of falling rain is what you need.
- Stream: A burbling, happy stream of water, possibly running through some woods — or wherever you’d prefer.
There are a few other options as well. These are largely self-explanatory, but just to summarize:
- Volume: How loud you want your background sound to be. Different from the volume when it’s playing over other media, which you can change below.
- Use When Media is Playing: This toggle-able setting decides if your background sound stops when other media starts playing. Turn this on if you’d rather have constant background noise, even while videos and music are playing.
- Volume with Media: This controls the volume level of the background sound while other media is playing.
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