When my middle child was born (7 years ago!) my sleep went off the rails. It might have also had to do with being in my late 30s, but I don’t know. So I bought a few noise machines, one for her room and one for us sleep deprived parents. My kid seemed indifferent (she was actually an okay sleeper) but I became dependent on that static sound. I had a film professor once who insisted that if a sound stayed constant for 10 or so seconds, you’ll eventually stop noticing it. It’s obviously still there, but you don’t fixate on it (the way I would with wind, water, birds, cafe, etc.).
These physical devices were fine. Kind of cheap and just a few sounds (nature too, which I surprisingly dislike) and a volume knob. But then we’d travel somewhere and I’d forget one or both devices. But I always had my phone. I know the noise machine world on the App Store is nothing new, but for whatever reason it’s still kind of, not great. Maybe I’m just a harsh critic. So that’s why I made Noision.
It’s incredibly simple. Noision opens and provides a balanced mix between white noise (blue-ish here), pink noise, and brown noise (yes a golden color) noise. Tap and drag the black hole in the center to mix is to your ideal noise balance. Tap the screen anywhere (except the two buttons) to open the settings, which allows you to control amplitude (not phone volume), the brightness of the app (not your phone brightness), and a little sine wave in the center, that when tapped will cycle through all three sounds over the course of a minute. A noise second hand, if you will.
By default, the sound fades in when you first open it and will play forever (∞ icon). You can switch between apps and it will play in the background. And/or you could set a timer and it will fade out at the end of your set hours/minutes. Pretty simple.
I actually love using it on an iPad. We have an ancient model—with a home button!—and it Noision runs perfectly on it. You can use it offline. There are no ads. It will cost $1.99 in a few weeks, but is free for now. It’s available on the App Store. Go ahead, give it a try, let me know what you think (or leave a review for the app).
AI disclosure statement (this should be a thing). I designed the app in Figma, and used Claude Code to do the programming in swift/Xcode. The graphics here were all made by me, though (even the Blender video which took way too long to render).
Here’s a very short example with audio 👇