I’ve spent years trying to fix my sleep. Every new gadget, every expert recommendation, every meditation app that promises to knock you out in minutes. Most of it was either too expensive, too complicated, or just didn’t work for someone like me who’s been battling insomnia since forever.
Then I stumbled on something that was literally sitting in my pocket the whole time.
For the past five years, I’ve relied on a Technology feature built right into my iPhone that most people don’t even know exists. No subscription required. No extra device to pack when traveling. Just a simple toggle that’s changed how I sleep, especially when I’m not in my own bed.
What Background Sounds Actually Does
Your iPhone has a feature called Background Sounds that essentially turns it into a white noise machine. It offers eight different ambient soundscapes: ocean, rain, stream, night, fire, balanced noise, bright noise, and dark noise. That’s it. Simple but effective.
I’m an ocean person myself. There’s something about the steady rhythm of waves that just works for my brain. It drowns out everything else without being too intrusive or changing intensity every few seconds like some rain sounds do.
The feature lets you play these sounds continuously, even when other apps are running. You can adjust the volume independently from your phone’s main volume, which means you can check your notifications without blasting ocean sounds at full volume.
Setting It Up Takes About 30 Seconds
If you have iOS 15 or later (and honestly, if you don’t, what are you doing?), you can add Background Sounds to your Control Center. Swipe down from the top-right corner of your screen, tap the plus symbol, then scroll down to the Hearing Accessibility section.
Once you add it, accessing your sounds is just a matter of holding down the icon with three music notes. Pick your sound, set your volume, and you’re done. No complicated menus or settings to dig through.
There’s also a settings option where you can choose whether the sounds play all the time or only when other media is playing. I keep mine set to play continuously at night, though I don’t use the auto-off feature when my phone locks. Why would I? The whole point is to have it playing while I sleep.
The One Annoying Problem I’ve Encountered
Here’s where things get frustrating. I used to have my phone set up so only certain contacts could reach me during Sleep mode. Emergency contacts only, you know? Made sense.
But Background Sounds would stop playing every single time my phone rang, even if it was a spam call at 3 AM. The sound would cut out, I’d wake up, and then I’d have to wait for them to hang up or leave a voicemail before I could restart it. By that point, I’m fully awake and annoyed.
This happened almost nightly during a particularly bad stretch of robocalls. My solution? I just silence all calls during Sleep mode now and told my emergency contacts to call my partner instead. He’s an early riser anyway, so it works out better for everyone involved.
Where This Feature Really Shines
Using Background Sounds at home is great, but it’s a lifesaver when traveling. Hotels are the worst for sleep. Thin walls, people slamming doors at 2 AM, ice machines that sound like construction sites, hallway conversations that might as well be happening in your room.
I’ve used this feature at every hotel, Airbnb, and friend’s house I’ve stayed at over the past few years. It’s drowned out barking dogs, street traffic, chirping birds at ungodly hours, and even a streetlamp that buzzed so loud I thought something was broken in my room.
The beauty of it is that I don’t need to pack anything extra or hope my host has a white noise machine. My phone is already coming with me. It’s always charged. It’s always there. I imagine it would work great on planes too, though I haven’t tested that yet since I usually just pass out from exhaustion at airports.
You’re essentially carrying a lifestyle tool that can transport you to a quiet beach or crackling fireplace whenever you need to tune out the world. No app subscription, no separate device cluttering your nightstand, no worrying about whether the hotel WiFi will let you stream your usual sleep sounds.
It’s wild how something this useful has been hiding in plain sight on millions of phones, and most people will never know it exists unless someone tells them about it.
