GoKawiilBabies can be difficult at times. Sometimes they'll eat right before they take a nap, and other times they will be upset by the mere suggestion of eating before going to sleep and want to be rocked off to dreamland. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, playing sounds from a white noise machine can help soothe your baby and get them to settle down, giving you a moment of respite. And if you have an iPhone, you don't need to spend money on a white noise machine.
When Apple released iOS 15 in 2021, the operating system brought a hidden feature 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 a podcast, music or video streaming app.
When Apple introduced Background Sounds, there were six ambient sounds to play on a loop: rain, stream and ocean waves, which are natural sounds, and bright, balanced and dark noise, which are different pitches of white noise. When the tech giant released iOS 18 in 2024, it added two sounds: night and fire. And iOS 26 brought even more background sounds to devices, including rain on roof and babble, which sounds like a busy cafe.
If you want to use these sounds to lull a baby back to sleep, or for any other reason, here's how to enable Background Sounds on your iPhone.
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.
4. Tap Hearing control (ear icon) under Hearing Accessibility to add to Control Center.
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