Comforting a crying baby can be difficult, especially if you aren't getting enough sleep. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, playing calming sounds from a white noise machine can help soothe your baby and get them to settle down -- and give you a moment of respite. But you don't have to buy a white noise machine if you have an iPhone.
When Apple released iOS 15 in 2021, the operating system brought a hidden feature to your iPhone called Background Sounds. It allows you to turn your iPhone into a white noise machine and you can play these sounds by themselves or under any podcast, music or video streaming app.
When Apple introduced the feature, there were six ambient sounds to play on a loop: rain, stream and ocean -- which are natural sounds -- and bright, balanced and dark noise -- which are different pitches of white noise. When Apple released iOS 18 in 2024, it added two sounds to the feature: night and fire. And iOS 26 brings even more background sounds to devices, like rain on roof and babble -- which sounds like a busy cafe.
Here's how to enable Background Sounds on your iPhone.
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How to access Background Sounds from your Control Center
Instead of searching through Settings each time you want to turn Background Sounds on, here's how you can set up a toggle in the Control Center to turn the feature on to use on your iPhone.
1. Open Control Center.
2. Tap the plus (+) sign in the top left of your screen.
3. Tap Add a Control near the bottom of your screen.
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