Play Background Sounds

Learn how to play background sounds, such as rain or a stream, on the iPhone.

Learn how to play background sounds on the iPhone. With Background Sounds, you can select what you want to play, such as rain or bright noise, as well as adjust the volume of that sound. This can be all done through the Control Center on the iPhone. Learn how in this video for the iPhone.

Video TranscriptIn this video, I’m going to show you how you play background sounds through the iPhone. This was introduced with iOS 15. With Background Sounds, what we’re able to do is play a background sound such as rain or a stream or bright noise in the background while we’re using our iPhone. So let’s say you’re in a loud environment, you have AirPods in, but it’s still a little bit too loud. What you would like to do is just drown that out a little bit with some background sounds, such as a stream or rain, or even just bright noise. You can now do that with the iPhone. Let’s see how. Let’s go to my iPhone.

Now there are a few different ways to use Background Sounds or to access it. You can access it through the Accessibility Settings in the Settings app, or what you can do is access it through the Control Center. This is how I like to use it, through the Control Center. It makes it real easy.

So the first thing we need to do is we need to add the Hearing Control to our Control Center. So let’s go over to my Settings app and add the Hearing Control to my Control Center. We do that through our Settings app. From here, what I need to do is go over to Control Center. This is where I can edit my control center. You’re going to see I have Included Controls, and then when I swipe up, I also have More Controls. The control that we need to add is our Hearing Control. These controls here with the green plus are not in my Control Center. So now what I do is I tap on the green plus, and we can see it has been added to my Control Center.

So that’s all we have to do to make these background sounds accessible. So I’m going to swipe up. We’re back at my home screen.

Now, what I want to do is I want to play some background sounds. Maybe I’m working. I’m in a loud environment. I have some AirPods in my ears, but it’s still a little bit loud. What I would like to do is just play some background noise very quietly in the back. How do we do that?

Well, now all we need to do is just go over to our Control Center. I swipe down, and you’re going to see our control that we just added. When I tap on this, we have our Background Sounds. All I need to do is just tap on this and it is playing a background sound.

I have the volume turned down so you can’t hear, but right now it is playing rain. If I had headphones on, I’d be able to hear that rain through my headphones. What we can do with these background sounds is adjust the level of that background sound compared to the level of our iPhone. So let’s say you wanted to have it just play in subtly in the back. You do not want to have a very loud, you’re watching a movie or you’re listening to a podcast, but you still want to have that background sound in the back.

All you have to do is just take this volume control here and slide it over to the left, and it turns down the background sound. It doesn’t actually turn down what you’re listening to on the iPhone. So if you’re listening to a podcast, it’s not going to turn that down. It just turns down the volume of the background sound of the rain in this case.

Let’s say you’re at a hotel. You like to have background noise playing when you’re sleeping. This is what I like to have. Well, then what we need to do is we need to turn this up. So I just slide this over to the right. So now will be a little bit louder while I’m sleeping.

I can also change the sounds. You’re going to see right now to set for rain. But when I tap on. I can select from a number of different background sounds. I’ve Balanced Noise, Bright Noise, Dark Noise, Ocean Rain, and Stream. I just tap on any one of them to play it.

So now that background sound is playing. We can see that it is turned down. So when I go back over to my home screen, that background sound is going to continue to play. It’s just playing in the background.

How do we turn this off? Well, all we have to do is just go back over to our Control Center. I swipe down and then we go over to our Hearing Control. And from here, we just tap on Background Sounds, the blue button. We can see that it is on and when I tap on it, it turns it off. So now it is no longer playing. I tap on it again, it turns it on. Tap on it again, turns it off.

So that’s how we play background sounds on our iPhone. Basically what we’re able to do with Background Sounds is just play a sound in the background. We can adjust the volume of that specific sound compared to anything else we’re listening to on the iPhone. We can also select what sound is playing. I recommend adding the Hearing Control to your Control Center, so you have easy access to it from your Control Center, but you can also access this through accessibility. Once you add Hearing to your Control Center, you do this through the Settings app, what you’re able to do is select what background sound you want to play as well as the volume of it by just tapping on the Hearing Control.

So that’s how you play Background Sounds on the iPhone.