Try This iPhone Feature to Help Lull Your Baby to Sleep
Reforming a crying baby can be difficult, especially if you don’t sleep enough. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, playing soothing sounds from a white noise machine can help appease your baby and get them to settle – 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 published iOS 15 in 2021, the operating system brought a hidden functionality to your iPhone called Background Sounds. It allows you to transform your iPhone into a white noise machine and you can read these sounds by themselves or under any podcast, music or video streaming application.
When Apple introduced the functionality, there were six ambient sounds to play on a loop: the rain, the stream and the ocean – which are natural sounds – and a luminous, balanced and dark noise – which are different heights of white noise. When Apple released iOS 18 in 2024, he added two sounds to functionality: Night and Fire. And iOS 26 Bring even more background sounds to the devices, such as rain on the roof and babbling – which looks like an animated coffee.
Here’s how to activate the background sounds on your iPhone.
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How to access the background sounds of your control center
Instead of searching in the settings each time you want to activate the background sounds, here is how you can configure a rocking in the control center to activate the feature to be used on your iPhone.
1 and 1 Open Control center.
2 Press the plus (+) connection at the top left of your screen.
3 and 3 Faucet Add a check near your screen.
4 Faucet Audience control (ear icon) under Hearing accessibility To add to the control center.
You can find hearing control under hearing accessibility in your control center.
Once the hearing control icon is in the control center, press it to see three options: speaker, background sounds and listen to live. Then press the music notes next to Substantive sounds To turn on the functionality. You can also press the words Substantive sounds To open a menu to choose a different background sound as well as to adjust the volume.
These are some of the sounds you can access in the background sounds.
Use accessibility shortcuts for background sounds
You can also configure an accessibility shortcut to activate or deactivate the background sounds from or deactivate your home screen or in an application. Here’s how to configure it.
1 and 1 Faucet Parameters.
2 Faucet Accessibility.
3 and 3 Faucet Accessibility shortcut.
4 Faucet Substantive sounds.
Now when you press the lateral button on your iPhone three times, the background sounds light up. You can press the button again three times to deactivate it.
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More background sound options
If you want more control over the background sounds, here is where to go.
1 and 1 Faucet Parameters.
2 Faucet Accessibility.
3 and 3 Faucet Audio and visual.
4 Faucet Substantive sounds.
Near this menu, you can activate the background sounds by pressing Substantive sounds to switch, and you can change the background sound by typing Her And choose a new sound.
You can play your background sounds while other media play if you wish.
There are two flip -flops in this menu: Use when the media play And Stop the sounds when locked. Pressing the rocking next to Use when the media play Allows the background sounds to continue playing while you watch a video or listen to music. And pressing the rocking next to Stop the sounds when locked Ensures that the background sounds go out when your device locks. If you have not activated it, the sounds will continue to play when your device locks.
There are also two new menus in iOS 26: the equalizer and stop sounds with timer. Equalizer allows you to adjust the tone and the outline of the background sounds, as well as the balance more towards the right or left speaker or the helmet. The stop sounds with a timer allows you to deactivate the background sounds at a specific time that you can choose or after a certain time spent.
The stop rings with a timer (left) and equalizer menus in iOS 26.
To find out more about iOS 26, here is My operating system examinationhow to reduce the effects of liquid glass in the update and how to activate calls on your iPhone. You can also consult our IOS 26 cheat sheet.
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