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I'm pretty sure it's under Accessibility for a good reason.


Then you can count yourself lucky. Not everybody can say of themselves that they do not need the Accessibility settings. To be honest, I find your comment a bit tone deaf.
Maybe the commenter isn’t just tone deaf but is fully deaf and can’t benefit from this. ;)
 
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I've been using this sort of thing for decades. White, brown, pink noise. Each one apparently has a different effect.

Pink noise supposedly will cause a physical reaction; something akin to shutting down some hearing functions. But I don't know about that, just something I heard about.

I use background noise to block out external annoyances. Works wonders, especially in hotels. Hotels are a crap shoot in regards to noise.

The real beauty of this, is the availability of very cheap bluetooth speakers that put out a whopping large sound, with huge low end, in a small portable battery operated package. Passive radiators are useful in these.
 
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Interesting. I do seem to always need noise/music going to be comfortable. Will check this out when I get iOS 15.

Instead of the apps mentioned here, my go-to bedtime/concentration "background noise" has been ambient-ish music: Tim Hecker, William Basinski, Loscil, Eluvium, Autechre, Stars of the Lid, Fennnesz, Ben Frost and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma to name a few.
 
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100% will vouch for the myNoise app as well. Best $5 or $10 I ever spent on an app.

And I personally find it funny, that a couple decades after I started using ambient music etc, and started to single task instead of multi-task, turning off alerts, notifications etc … that both finally going mainstream enough that they will get baked into the OS.
 
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I minimize background sounds and distractions with noise cancelling headphones.

Nature's cyclic sounds like sea waves or constant sounds (a fixed fan, white noise, constant rain, etc) helps masking annyoing things like tinnitus or other distracting stuff, even relax before sleep. I've been using an ambience sounds app at night and it does wonders. Evolutionarily speaking it's more natural to us to hear a background noise (i.e insects, rain, wind, leaves moving...) than pure silence. Of course keep doing what works better for you
 
I want Apple to use machine learning to build a soundtrack for my life as I move about on my day and have Siri narrate it.

I feel like that could somehow turn into a Black Mirror episode. Am I really the arbiter of my own existence or is the AI pulling at my strings to make me dance?
 
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These are amazing and there are so many options out there. I have been a subscriber to Calm Radio for years (different to the other Calm business) and they have a great amount of background noise options. River Rain, Thunderstorms, Forest, train and Private Jet are some of my favourites, they just take the feeling of pressure off my ears (mild tinnitus) and really help allow me to focus.

I would encourage anyone with even the slightest possible interest to try them out, playing gently in the background, it has really helped me and hopefully may others too.
 
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“We’ve got a new feature but we’re not quite sure where in Settings to put it.”

“Just jam it into Accessibility.”
I have "reduce motion" because I find the animation where the app icons fly in when unlocking just way too irritating. I wish I could let all the other animations on but just disable the unlocking one. Having the switch in accessibility makes me very self-conscious.
 
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It’s hidden in accessibility, but I have a feeling they’ll eventually "upgrade" it to its own app if they’re able to flesh out the functionality and market it as a "wellness" or "zen" feature. I’m already using these sounds to go to sleep at night haha.

Pop it into control center and it’s basically 2-3 clicks away.
 
Thanks for the suggestion! Just downloaded this.
soundscaping is becoming a HUGE industry and I’m curious how this will affect positively for mental health from all challenges.

Filing on assessability’s because most of the western world still does not understand mental health or the issues that many millions of people are suffering even more more more lately in our part of the world or in our culture even having a psychiatrist is frowned upon yet in many countries in South America or the rest of the world your front upon if you don’t have a personal psychiatrist by the time you’re 12. Hence why it’s listed under accessibility because sooner or later it will be part of health

Probably because this is a great feature for someone on autism spectrum, ADHD etc.

But accessibility ≠ health (mental or otherwise). Accessibility features are meant to be those that are specifically to improve ease of use of the phone for people who might otherwise struggle to use its standard interface for one reason or another. That's something distinctly different from a feature of the phone that helps people manage or prevent health issues (which is what this is). So I agree, whilst I can see this as being a useful feature, I think putting this in Accessibility is illogical, makes it difficult to find, and leaves it less likely to be discovered by someone who might benefit from it.
 
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My favorite for this is myNoise. Has a TON of different sounds and new ones are added frequently across a lot of genres. A lot of the soundscapes are customizable -- so in a forest scene for example you can dial down the birds or crank up the creek. Pretty great.

The other thing I like about it is that it lets you mix its audio with other apps. I will mix in a background sound with my meditation app to help mask outside noise, for instance.
That's the one I use to help me get to sleep sometimes. I don't think Apple's version has a timer function though so isn't a replacement.
 
This is pretty helpful. It’s nice to not rely on an app for ambient sounds like this. You can also add “Hearing” to Control Center to enable this on the fly.

It’s nice that this feature is now included in the OS, but the selection of sounds isn’t quite as nice as what’s available in a third party app like Portal.
 
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Thanks for the suggestion! Just downloaded this.
soundscaping is becoming a HUGE industry and I’m curious how this will affect positively for mental health from all challenges.
I'm also a big fan of myNoise. I love combining the "Mr. Rhodes" 'scape with something like "Rain Noise" or "Unreal Ocean" - some soft ambient nature sounds - and just let it go in the background.
 
But accessibility ≠ health (mental or otherwise). Accessibility features are meant to be those that are specifically to improve ease of use of the phone for people who might otherwise struggle to use its standard interface for one reason or another. That's something distinctly different from a feature of the phone that helps people manage or prevent health issues (which is what this is). So I agree, whilst I can see this as being a useful feature, I think putting this in Accessibility is illogical, makes it difficult to find, and leaves it less likely to be discovered by someone who might benefit from it.
I think you’re applying too limited a definition for accessibility. You should explore its features. You might find others you could benefit from.
 
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