Show HN: I built a simple ambient sound app with no ads or subscriptions

Show HN

I built a simple ambient sound app with no ads or subscriptions

alpaca121 303 points ambisounds.app

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...

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monitron

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...

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bko

I built a free calculator for iOS because I found the free calculators (for iPad) were super spammy and ugly. There was (and still is?) literally video ads that play between calculations. And since Apple didn't (doesn't?) offer a calculator app that came bundled with iPad, it was a huge market.

But I was naive and thought I could just create an obviously superior app and it would find some users. Why hadn't anyone thought of this before? But the app market is so saturated and poorly managed that there's practically no chance you can find users. Or at least I didn't care enough because.. you know.. its a free app. How much can I invest to get you to have a decent experience.

And the other point which was really the death blow to my app, is the ridiculous $100+ a year fee to app store to even host a free app. So after a few years and very few users, I decided to kill it.

1. The search sucks and prioritizes "popular" spammy apps.

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HnUser12

Native calculator is available on iPad now. I think starting last year.

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quintu5

Having never owned a tablet, finding out now that iPad didn’t have a native calculator until 2024 is shocking!

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cowboylowrez

yeah but can't you use the ipads built in ssh to just use bc on a linux that you remote to?

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lukevp

Is this a parody of the Dropbox comment or is this sincere? I don’t think iPads have built in ssh… and even if they do, this is a far cry from an app. It assumes you have a Linux machine on your local network and are willing and able to set up ssh to connect to it as well as learn command line tooling for making calculations.

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alpaca121

100% agree with you. Most of my time on this project actually went into making sure the loops play seamlessly—no gaps, glitches, or fades—since even the tiniest hiccup can throw off light sleepers. I’ve also tested the app across different headphones and speakers, with and without noise cancellation, but if you try it and notice anything off, please tell me. I’d really love to make it as smooth as possible.

For the app maintenance side, I’m intentionally keeping both the UI and backend super simple so updates are easy to manage. And honestly, I just enjoy iOS development, so even the maintenance part feels more like fun than work.

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QuadDamaged

Try MyNoise. I used to build their app, if you can spot a single loop you have superhuman hearing.

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AndyNemmity

You used to build it? It's wonderful, thank you for your work.

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sudo712

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.

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jpablo

The $100 is per year.

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OptionOfT

It is still disgusting. There is no need for that fee to be there, because remember, it sits on top of the purchase of at least $1,500 (a decent Mac).

I tried to see if I could make improvements to Immich. No can do, as half of their entitlements require a team account (and even then begging Apple to get the entitlements).

Now, they do offer a private account, so I spent time removing those entitlements. Guess what? Starting over 3 times and you're hit with a 'you can only sign 10 apps / week'.

Why do apps built for my iPhone, which I explicitly need to put in Developer mode, need to be signed by daddy Cook?

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sudo712

True. I completely forgot about that part. I absolutely love my windows PC, but I had to buy a mac so I can support cross platform

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kiba

Apple can charge you that because they have a platform which is a monopoly.

Granted, they did the work that built and maintain the platform, but at some point it's actually the countless developers who contribute value, not Apple.

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sudo712

yeah. sorry my brain was on auto pilot.

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jezek2

You can create PWA apps for free. The installation process is a bit hidden, you need to instruct users to "Add to homescreen" the app, but a popup with instructions will do. For most apps there is not much difference of being in the AppStore or not, you need to market it yourself anyway.

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brunosutic

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.

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gblargg

Seconded on LectroFan. I've been using one for years for sleeping all night. No looping at all. Inside it only has 16K of flash, not enough to store samples. I once recorded it for 8 hours and looked for any repeating dips in the waveform, but found nothing. I used the old analog Marsona units for decades before this, so it had some good competition. Customer service was great when I contacted them years ago with a rattling problem with one of mine.

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lukevp

What’s the built in white noise feature in iOS? First time hearing about this!

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somedude895

Settings > Accessibility > Audio & Visual > Background Sounds

It's quite hidden in there but I think you can create shortcuts / quick access to it.

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tmountain

Same here, we have a lot of noise in our area. I have a LectroFan, and it's invaluable. It's simplicity is what makes it so great. We don't need apps for everything. In fact, I prefer to avoid them when possible.

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jedimastert

It's kinda funny these things exist to me. I actually used to keep a window AC unit when I could have upgrade to something much nicer because the noise helped me sleep.

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vzaliva

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!

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b0dhimind

There's a few on F-droid. Soothing Noise Player seemed interesting. I'm sure there's a bunch more on Google Play.

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cyclotron3k

OP makes an app for his own needs and his own phone and decides to share it for free, at considerable cost ($100/yr), and your response is to ask him to remake it for you, from scratch (in another language), for an OS that OP doesn't use? Holy shit

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alisonatwork

I use ChromaDoze from F-Droid when I am sleeping somewhere intermittently noisy and need some base noise to raise the floor. There's a couple of other ones, but I found this the most simple, you just draw a filter and click go.

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FiddlerClamp

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

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andrepd

MyNoise is probably my #1 pick for most outstanding website period. So clean. So functional. So attentive to detail. So beautiful. Such care in assembling the generators. So varied. Free of ads and tracking. Freemium with a pay-what-you-want lifetime subscription. Gentle reminders to donate if you use the site a lot.

Damn I need to drop another tenner.

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FiddlerClamp

I also like how people can submit their own presets for each soundscape with comments, so you can see what worked for others.

My only wish is for a smooth fade-out when leaving a sound generator page, or a way to cross-fade between them.

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dax_

It's just one of those sites that focuses on one thing, and does that extremely well, without trying to extract as much money from its users as possible. Rare thing nowadays.

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wiether

It should be noted that they also provide a very nice iOS app that is free but comes with IAP to unlock all the soundscapes and help them maintain the whole thing alive for many years now.

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FiddlerClamp

Android, too. I've contributed to the Web site, but not the Android app (as yet).

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uyzstvqs

This, and Nomadic Ambience on YouTube. He actually uses binaural recording, which is absolutely above all the best for ambient sounds. I believe myNoise uses high-quality stereo recording, which is still very good as well.

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alpaca121

some of the best sounds out there

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rbalicki

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.

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alpaca121

Great suggestion! Will get these sounds to play with other music. Regarding the formatting issues- what phone and os version are you on? Would love to fix it asap

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rbalicki

iOS 18.5, iPhone 15 Pro

I have some accessibility settings on, like button shapes on, on/off labels on, reduce transparency on, increase contrast on, differentiate without color on. But surprisingly no changes to default font size or something that might be expected to cause that.

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mft_

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.)

---

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.)

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Shadowmist

I would love to be able to search for apps without subscriptions and games without gems or whatever. I don’t mind an in-app purchase to unlock a full game or remove ads.

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accrual

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.

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alpaca121

Thanks for the kind words and yeah there's another app with the same name that ranks higher. I need to work on my app store seo.

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accrual

Of course! And thank you for the great app.

A lot of people use "noise apps" as a form of relief, either from sleep disorders, tinnitus (ringing of the ears), general wellbeing, etc. So having a nice quality app for free like this is likely to make a positive impact on someone's life, somewhere. Thank you.

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gslepak

Android version would be cool for those using GrapheneOS!

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ocdtrekkie

You aren't the only one doing this in the discussion, but I need to point out: This person made an app for themselves on the device they use, with no ads or subscriptions. So no business model.

And you want them to make an app for you on your platform of choice? Please just think about this.

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amelius

What is wrong with stating your preferences or requirements? It might result in someone making "better" choices and making more people happy. For example by using cross platform tools or building a web app, or releasing the sources (sounds in this case) so someone else can build something better.

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ocdtrekkie

I don't see anything wrong with someone suggesting similar apps on Android or being disappointed they can't use this because they don't use the same OS as the author.

Comments suggesting an iOS developer who made a free iOS app for his own use and then shared it should go and make them an Android app can only be described as entitled ###holes.

Why didn't the author use cross platform tools? They weren't making a cross platform app. They did not need those tools. It wouldn't be "better" if they did, it would be unrelated to the requirements the author had for the project.

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amelius

They only said that an android version would be cool.

And I'm just saying that using cross platform tools has the potential to make more people happy.

Besides. They weren't just making an app for themselves, because it is in the app store (something which requires more effort).

Your comment is not grounded in reality.

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ocdtrekkie

They weren't just making an app for themselves, because it is in the app store

It’s something I built for myself first, but I figured others might find it useful too.

Let someone make things for the sake of it, and share that thing because they want to. Because it brings them joy. Without asking for more because you would make different choices. I urge you to self-reflect on what led you to the comments you are making.

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amelius

Nobody is forcing anyone to make different choices.

This is a forum, where people discuss things and make suggestions.

If some suggestions rub you the wrong way, then maybe take some distance and don't try to take it as a personal attack. Because that is totally not the intention here.

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zschuessler

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.

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alpaca121

Thanks for the support! Will definitely consider adding an about page

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ssttoo

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)

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alpaca121

- There are all curated from bunch of different online sources like pixabay that allow usage without any restrictions - Not too hard. I just need to test it thoroughly to make sure the experience is as good as the latest os

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interloxia

Not the author. I built one of these years ago and had fun finding and using sounds from radio aporee.

https://archive.org/details/radio-aporee-maps

https://aporee.org/maps/info/

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andy_ppp

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.

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alpaca121

That's a great suggestion. I haven't given much thought to monetization. And personally I really this to be freely available to all who need and enjoy it. But an optional payment option doesn't sound too bad.

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andy_ppp

Exactly, no harm if people want to thank you for a great app!

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finger

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.

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HelloUsername

Yup, came here to say that too. iOS Settings - Accessibility - Audio & Visual - Background Sounds. Offers the same as OP's app, except mixing. The only thing I miss is a a fade out possibility. For example, set timer at 01:00 minute and it slowly fades out over that whole minute. Much better than such an abrupt end. Not sure if OP's app does offer that.

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brunosutic

Yes, and the same feature is available on Mac too. I occasionally use it with headphones for work, when I want to stay focused.

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bschwindHN

Their "dark noise" combined with airpods / headphones in noise cancelling mode is enough to put me to sleep in almost any environment, it's great.

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Terretta

Any plans for sounds of public spaces with unintelligible talking (options ranging from cafe murmur to hip restaurant crescendo), but not crashing dishes or other startle noises?

This sort of thing: https://coffitivity.com

But local first, app, using sounds curated to avoid engaging language center or triggering startle reflex.

FWIW, happy owner of TMSOFT's "White Noise" on iOS for nearly 20 years, which isn't scammy. Particularly enjoy how easy it makes it to capture and loop ambient environments. But still looking for an app with the perfect background cafe/office loop for focused work.

(I also really like: https://ozlosleep.com This is the successor to Bose's sleep buds, the literal tech bought back by engineers to make a go of, and works better.)

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alpaca121

Yes! public noises are next on the roadmap. Also had no idea something like Ozlosleep existed. Very interesting product.

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smcleod

That's really nice and clean. Thank you for making it available for everyone. Have you considered having the ability to save presets of your favourite mixes?

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alpaca121

Yes! Coming very soon

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tonyhart7

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

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alpaca121

No you don't. You can submit an app as a solo developer. I formed the LLC for my design consultancy so just used the same for my Apple dev account.

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withinboredom

If you don't use an LLC, then you have to register as a human person and it lists your personal name on the app store. That means weird people will find you and send you letters, packages, random invoices, emails, dms, etc. It really isn't cool (from experience).

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AnonC

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.

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alpaca121

Thanks for sharing the feedback. Making the timer granular is very easy. And I'll find more fire sounds as well :)

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skopje

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.

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alpaca121

Yeah..the goal is to keep the app as minimal as possible while offering useful functionality to users without charge. Glad it's useful for you.

You're right about the low app store ranking on search. I need to look into optimizing those results.

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rjdj377dhabsn

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

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smokeydoe

Not having to go find the ambient sound clips yourself.

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rjdj377dhabsn

But one could find it on YouTube (ad free with Firefox and ublock origin) in less time than it would take to install an app.

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mandeepj

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.

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alpaca121

Thanks for trying:) and its definitely a great way to develop a good ear for sounds and pickup basic audio engineering. i certainly got comfortable with audacity along the way

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thehamkercat

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

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sbarre

Couple Arguing + Nuclear Siren

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airstrike

Volcano + Rain + Coffee Shop is my jam.

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alpaca121

cuuute!

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believ3

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!

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alpaca121

For sure..very helpful feedback. Will find better thunders

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hahajk

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…

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alpaca121

Great point.. that's definitely doable

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saaaaaam

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!

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alpaca121

:) glad its helpful!

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ada1981

Any plans to add bineural beats like brain.fm?

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alpaca121

Yes! very soon. Hopefully in the next update

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ada1981

Nice! I bought a lifetime license to brain.fm when they first came out for $75, but I’d Recommend this to others.

Also is it open source? Would be fun to look under the hood.

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rishi-singh

This is awesome, did you use SwiftUI for this?

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alpaca121

Yes :)

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vintagedave

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.

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prabakarviji

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?

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alpaca121

Not at the moment but its easy to build. Do you already have a collection of ambient sounds that you know will loop seamlessly?

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kimos

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.

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jwr

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.

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caseyf7

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

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6comb

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.

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holler

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

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AfterHIA

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.

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gantengx

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?

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MobileVet

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

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orsenthil

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.

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whycome

This seems great. It’s similar to https://ambiph.one/ And I have to say that I like that it offers a PWA version.

Would you do a PWA?

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macartain

Meh.. Needs ios18.. But thank you - I salute the effort!

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melvinchus

[dead]

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ahmedfromtunis

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.

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CalRobert

Any particular reason for requiring iOS 18.2?

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alpaca121

That was just the OS version I was on. But i'll be making it backward compatible soon.

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Workaccount2

Wonderful, thanks so much!

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encom

  $ aplay -f cd /dev/urandom

Here's your app.

If we're being fancy (SoX):

  $ play -n synth 0 [white|brown|pink]noise

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jslakro

Don't forget https://soundofcolleagues.com/ coming straight from the days of lockdown

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oigursh

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

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lovegrenoble

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

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basedrum

Android please

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w-ll

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

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HelloUsername

Yup, came here to say that too.

iOS Settings - Accessibility - Audio & Visual - Background Sounds

Offers the same as OP's app, except mixing. The only thing I miss is a a fade out possibility. For example, set timer at 01:00 minute and it slowly fades out over that whole minute. Much better than such an abrupt end. Not sure if OP's app does offer that.

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johnjames87

I needed this