iOS 18 expands ambient noise lineup with new Fire and Night sounds

Did you know that iOS includes built-in ambient noise options? Third-party white noise apps are great, but if you don’t need the extra features they offer, Apple’s own solution is already on your device at no extra cost. And in iOS 18, two new background sounds have been added to the lineup: Fire and Night.

The iPhone and iPad’s built-in ambient sounds

Apple’s ambient noises are part of the Accessibility feature suite. Here’s how you find them on your iPhone and iPad:

1. Open Settings
2. Go to Accessibility
3. Open Audio & Visual
4. Lastly, go to Background Sounds

Here, you’ll find the variety of ambient noises built into iOS. They’re in macOS too under System Settings ⇾ Accessibility ⇾ Audio.

Previously, there were six sound options available, but iOS 18 expands that roster to eight. The full list is as follows:

• Balanced Noise
• Bright Noise
• Dark Noise
• Ocean
• Rain
• Stream
• Night
• Fire

Fire and Night are the two new options, and they make great additions to what was already there. Fire has become a favorite of mine for writing sessions.

One detail of Background Sounds I especially appreciate is that—as the name implies—you can keep them running even when other audio is playing.

Using Control Center to trigger sounds

Jumping into Settings every time you want to enable or disable Background Sounds would be a pain. Fortunately, Apple provides easy access via Control Center.

You can set up a Control Center toggle for Background Sounds in iOS 17 and prior. But this process is made easier and better in iOS 18.

In the new Control Center in iOS and iPadOS 18, you can create a Background Sounds toggle in three different sizes, and long-press to quickly change sounds and adjust the volume level.

The convenience of the new Control Center changes, combined with the new noise options, have made me use Background Sounds a lot more often in iOS 18.

Do you use Background Sounds? What do you think of the new options? Let us know in the comments.

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