I’ve always liked having background noise while working or falling asleep, but I got frustrated that most “white noise” or ambient sound apps are either paywalled, stuffed with ads, or try to upsell subscriptions for basic features.

So I made Ambi, a small iOS app with a clean interface and a set of freely available ambient sounds — rain, waves, wind, birds, that sort of thing. You can mix them, adjust volume levels, and just let it play all night or while you work. Everything works offline and there are no hidden catches.

It’s something I built for myself first, but I figured others might find it useful too. Feedback, bugs, and suggestions are all welcome.

https://apps.apple.com/app/ambi-white-noise-sleep-sounds/id6...

This is fantastic, thank you. Recently when trying to sleep away from home, I went looking for a noise app and was grossed out by the state of the available apps, just like you said.

BTW One unfortunate feature that many noise apps/websites have (including Apple Music's official noise buttons) is that after a few minutes, they fade out and back in or have some other jarring transition when repeating. This is far from ideal for sleep, meditation, etc. So this is an enhancement request, if your app doesn't already solve this ;)

I'm also curious: do you think that the cost of maintaining the app (keeping it up to date with newer iOS versions, for instance) will eventually dissuade you from keeping it available in its pristine state? I've wondered why there seem to be ZERO free apps by hobbyists on the App Store in categories like this...

We have 3 young kids in the range from 2 to 5 years old. We use white noise heavily for our kids sleep. It isolates them from the noises we make around the house.

For this purpose I recommend "LectroFan" devices. We have like 5 "LectroFan Evos" in our's and our kids' bedrooms. They just work, no apps, no upgrades, no LEDs blinking, and thank god, no screens. These devices are worth their amount in gold.

On the phone I recommend using iOS built-in white noise feature. We use it when travelling by car, and our kids sleep in their seats. When we turn the white noise on they stop talking and it quickly lulls them into sleep.

I'm a longtime fan of Web-based myNoise: https://mynoise.net/

I really like the reason behind developing this, having seen other similar apps that are annoying to use or have subscriptions.

I downloaded it, tried it, and like the clean design.

One suggestion I have is to make the sleep timer more granular. Just allow the user to choose a specific number of hours and minutes instead of a fixed list of 5 min, 10 min, 30 min, 1 hr, 10 hr. The current set is too limited for me to use for sleep (to drown out noises after going to bed).

Another suggestion is to add more sounds. There seem to be many rain sounds but only one fire related sound.

Very nicely done. Supporting good/honest apps is important, I gave you a five-star review and I hope others do the same.

I would've enjoyed an "About" tab, or something similar. I like your basic approach to the app, but if you did want to share more with your users, I think that'd be a good thing.

Let's not forget https://neal.fun/ambient-chaos/

For those unaware, iOS includes a limited selection of such sounds. You cant mix or anything, but it might be good enough, at least it is for me. Search for Background Sounds in settings.

Thanks for making this avialable.

I am Linux (ZorinOS, FTW) and I use SoundScape https://github.com/ddanilov/soundscape

There is https://freesound.org/ which can provide a multitude of free sounds too.

https://rain.today/ is nice. Dynamic rather than a recording

One of the earliest apps I installed, back on the first iPhone, was the Sleepmaker Rain / Storms app. These days it's free, because the owner could no longer make money in the modern app store. I've been listening to the same rain sounds for close to twenty years now. Rain recordings through a phone are often too high-pitched and listening to your rain sounds, all other than two have the same issue; they had a great balance of types of rain sound.

OP, consider syncing with them? You have a slick interface; they have a wonderful audio library.

Thanks for this - de-installed an alternative and installed this.

Any thoughts of some sort of equalizer feature? I like brown noise for sleeping in noisy environments, and would love to be able to add a bit more bass to your sample. (Brown noise plus some Airplane is actually pretty good.)

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Side thought - there needs to be a club (with a curated list?) for simple apps that work well, and commit to staying ad-free. I'd love to be able to search amongst such apps prior to auditioning options from the App Store. (I mean, it would be great to be able to filter for such apps in the App Store itself, but that's not going to happen.)

Fantastic. Love it. Love the collection of so many sounds.

One request I have: please play the white noise on the "other" track, so that one can also listen to music and white noise simultaneously. See how "White noise by sleep pillow" does it.

There are some formatting issues (i.e. stuff is off screen), but nbd, still usable. Perhaps that prevents me from layering multiple sounds, though.

Lovely! Couple questions…

- where did you get the noises, are they your own recordings?

- how hard it is to support earlier iOS? For folks like me who are on older phones that cannot be upgraded anymore (iOS 16 personally)

Downloaded this. It drowned out perfectly the noise from my upstairs neighbour sitting on her balcony watching YouTube videos above my open bedroom window. Thank you!

Related: if you use iOS or macOS, I highly recommend Naturespace for nature sounds and Iceland White for natural white noise-like sounds. No distractions, excellent quality audio.

Very high quality app, thank you! It's simple, looks nice, and does everything it needs to. I love that it automatically allows playing in the background and appears on the lock screen, etc.

The only thing I noticed was there's another app also called Ambi that generates background sound which I mistakenly downloaded first. It popped up a message to buy premium, then I knew I had the wrong app. ;)

For fun, play train + airplane at the same time. Train in the sky.

Wow this looks incredible! I quite like the Overcast model where you can optionally pay a little just to support the author rather than for extra features or nagware.

Tried installing it. Simple and Sleek user experience, well crafted. Just curious, is there a way I can add ambient sound to the list locally from my device?

Just downloaded! Thanks for your efforts on it.

I was thinking of building something similar to the point of even learning music production, for the similar reasons you have listed. I think I can postpone my idea now.

I don’t think many people would mind watching once a day ad just to support your work. But, whatever makes you happy.

I love the idea, and thanks for doing this. I would like to create free apps too just for the heck of it but one of the biggest issues I find with creating free app store apps is that, regardless of whether you are charging money or not, you need to keep feeding Apple $100 per year, which is excruciating, especially for countries where the developer population is much higher and the income disparity is high. Since the Play Store only charges 25$ ish and one time, it is much more feasible to do it on the Play Store, hence the availability of such apps is more on Play Store.

Back in 2008 I downloaded an app similar to this and then during one update 6 or 7 years later it vanished from the app store... and my phone! Been looking for a replacement since. I even studied Swift to write my own.

Thanks for writing the app, and not collecting any data! Reminds me of the glory days of the first app store before it all went to crap.

Also, I searched for the exact search string name of your app and you were STILL the third app down.

it requiers subscripiton to Apple ecosystem: closed hardware iPhone, closed-source iOS, app store blessing to distribute. :)

Could you do an Android version to alleviate some of these hurdles?

P.S. Do not mean do diminish your achievement. I've tried many these apps which fed me ads or ask to subscribe, so a free alternative is very welcome! Thanks!

Thanks for this! Really appreciate it that it has no ads. Curious though, is the sound all generated on the fly or is it static audio file?

My goodness, thank you. The other white noise apps I use for my kids when we travel work on a subscription. I have to remember to subscribe, to play a single sound, then cancel my subscription. Made me want to learn iOS development out of spite.

This is great. I’ve been looking for something like this for a long time after giving up on Portal. Thank you

Also the web-based one, with nature (and fantasy) sounds: https://tabletopy.com

Congrats! Two comments after trying the app out:

1) The thunder sounds loop too quickly; can you find sources that are longer perhaps (like 15+ mins)? 2) Can you try to source more unique thunder sounds?

Thank you!

Any particular reason for requiring iOS 18.2?

If you're on Android and want something similar, try Atmosphere.

For years now it's the first app I install on every phone I buy.

It's ad-supported though.

Very nice :) The ability to add my own mp3 loops would be choice. Is that possible? I’m choosy about the exact cafe-train mix I work to…

Really nicely done. Love the mixing capabilities, that was particularly nicely implemented.

Sounds like a convienet app, but is there any advantage to just looping an ambient sound clip in a generic audio player?

this is ripper. how hard would it be for you to enable homepod support? my dream would be an app that allows me to also add my own track (to be repeated or just played once), that i can start using the homepod. trying not to have a phone in the room, etc.

very nice! curious if you could comment on the tech stack, did you use swift or react native or something else?

Android version would be cool for those using GrapheneOS!

I needed this

Android please

This is awesome, did you use SwiftUI for this?

Wonderful, thanks so much!

not to be that guy, but isnt there a bunch of built in white noise/ rain noise/ etc built into ios accessibility

ok what is Your TOMO llc mean???

does we really need to register LLC to upload into appstore???? that's seem excessive no? especially if your app isnt generating profit

You're doing God's work. I used to use my white noise generator for a lot of things-- not just, "creating blinding noise" but sampling authentic pink and white noise had applications where having this over an aux cable was pretty handy.

...now my buttfucking IPhone has no aux out and the app I use charges 6.99 to access the mixer. Go figure.