Newborns can be difficult. They eat all the time, pee and poop wherever they want, and can cry all night. According to American Academy of PediatricsPlaying sounds from a white noise machine can help soothe your baby and get him to calm down and give you a moment of respite. And if you have iPhoneyou don't need to spend money on a new white noise machine.
When Apple released iOS 15 in 2021, a hidden feature called Background sounds. It allows you to turn your iPhone into a white noise machine, and you can play those sounds separately or in an app for podcasts, music, or video streaming.
When Apple introduced the feature, it played six ambient sounds in a loop: rain, stream, and ocean (these are natural sounds), and bright, balanced, and dark noise (different pitches). white noise. When Apple released iOS 18 in 2024, two sounds were added to this feature: night and fire. AND iOS 26 added even more background sounds to devices, such as rain on the roof and babbling – which sounds like a busy cafe.
Whether you want to use these sounds to lull your baby to sleep or for any other reason, here's how to turn on background sounds on your iPhone.
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How to access background sounds from Control Center
Instead of searching through Settings every time you want to turn on background sounds, you can set a switch in Control Center to enable the feature for use on your iPhone.
1. Open Control Center.
2. Click the plus sign (+) in the top left corner of the screen.
3. Tap Add a control at the bottom of the screen.
4. Tap Hearing control (ear icon) under Hearing Accessibility add to Control Center.
You can find hearing controls in the Hearing Accessibility section of Control Center.
When the Hearing Control icon appears in Control Center, tap it to see three options: Speaker, Background Sounds, and Live Listening. Then tap the musical notes next to Background sounds to enable this feature. You can also click on the words Background sounds to open a menu to select a different background sound, as well as adjust the volume.
These are some of the sounds you can access in Background Sounds.
Use accessibility shortcuts for background sounds
You can also set up an accessibility shortcut to turn background sounds on or off on your home screen or app. Here's how to set it up.
1. Tap Settings.
2. Tap Availability.
3. Tap Accessibility shortcut.
4. Tap Background sounds.
Now, when you triple-click the side button on your iPhone, the background sound will turn on. You can press the button three times again to turn it off.
Additional background audio options
If you want more control over background sounds, here's where to go.
1. Tap Settings.
2. Tap Availability.
3. Tap Audio and video.
4. Tap Background sounds.
At the top of this menu, you can enable background sounds by clicking the icon Background sounds switch and you can change the background sound by clicking Sound and select a new sound.
If you want, you can play background sounds while other media is playing.
There are two switches in this menu: Use while playing media And Stop sounds when blocked. Click on the switch next to Use while playing media allows background sounds to continue playing while you watch a video or listen to music. And press the switch next to Stop sounds when blocked Ensures that background sounds are muted when the device is locked. If you don't have this option enabled, sounds will continue to play when your device is locked.
iOS 26 also includes two new menus: Equalizer and Stop Sounds with Timer. The equalizer allows you to adjust the tone and contour of background sounds, and better balance towards the right or left speaker or headphones. Stopping sounds with a timer allows you to turn off background sounds at a specific time that you can choose or after a certain amount of time has passed.
Menu for stopping sounds using the timer (left) and equalizer in iOS 26.
For more iOS news, here's everything you need to know. iOS 26.1 And my review of iOS 26. You can also check out our iOS 26 cheat sheet.
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