While research tends to go back and forth on the advantages of noise versus silence for inventiveness and productivity, I always notice myself more relaxed and focused at work afterwards turning on a low-cal amount of ambience sound, commonly with some combination of rain, fan noise, and white racket.

That addiction has turned me into somewhat of an ambient sound connoisseur. Too many ambient dissonance apps come up with inexpensive sound furnishings, annoying commercial breaks, or exorbitant subscription fees. And while you can always merely tune into an ambient noise track on Spotify or YouTube, a proper app volition give yous more than customization, congenital-in timers, and even soothing backgrounds in some cases.

Hither's my collection of the all-time apps and websites for ambience noise and music. A handful come with a one-time fee, merely most of them are completely complimentary:

Noizer

When the long-running ambient noise site Noisli moved to subscription-based pricing final year, Dmitriy Malakhov decided to create a free alternative. Noizer offers 20 ambient sounds to mix and match, along with a shuffle function, a sweep mode that mixes up volume levels over time, and a few unlike groundwork color schemes. It'south simple but effective, and information technology even works offline if you install it every bit a web app.

Dark Noise

Easily the best ambient noise app for iOS, Dark Noise offers 50 background sounds and the power to create your own mixes. It too has a dwelling-screen widget and Siri support, so y'all tin launch your favorite mixes with voice commands. The app is a $six ane-fourth dimension purchase with no ads, which is a steal given how many ambient noise apps crave a subscription instead. Just don't actuate the "Unnamed Goose Style" in the "Dark Labs" settings menu (unless you want to turn all of your sounds into goose honks).

Atmosphere: Relaxing Sounds

While Dark Noise isn't available on Android, Atmosphere: Relaxing Sounds is an first-class alternative. It lets you lot mix and lucifer dozens of ambient sounds, plus information technology includes a gear up of binaural and isochronic tones for folks who are into brainwave synchronization. It's also the rare racket app that lets y'all import your own custom audio files.

lofi.cafe

Click through the dozen or then cyberspace radio stations of lofi.cafe, and y'all'll encounter snapshots of rainy nights, neon lights, and 16-bit graphics. Those looping visuals help set the mood for the site's downtempo hip-hop beats, perfect for relaxing or studying. The site also has a built-in Pomodoro timer, which you can activate through the clock icon in the top-right corner.

Fan of Sleep

Instead of trying to offer every sound imaginable, Fan of Slumber puts fan noise forepart and center. The free iOS app simulates three levels of fan speed and lets you mix in half dozen types of nature sounds for a picayune more ambience. It likewise has a slumber timer and adjustable groundwork colors.

Nightwave Plaza

While information technology'southward not explicitly a mode to stay focused, Nightwave Plaza, with its round-the-clock vaporwave tunes, might scratch the itch for a certain kind of downtempo music. The animated backgrounds and Windows-style playback menus are overnice touches likewise. It'south available on the spider web, iOS, and Android.

MyNoise

What MyNoise lacks in aesthetics, it makes upwards for with its vast itemize of set-made mixes, from Japanese gardens and Irish coasts to medieval villages and modern offices. Each page has a set of sliders for adjusting individual effects, and yous tin striking "Save in URL" to create a link to those adjustments later. The site is free to use and seeks only the occasional donation for support.

Noise on smart speakers

If you accept an Amazon Echo, Google Dwelling house/Nest, or Apple HomePod speaker handy, you tin can plow on some ambient noise without lifting a finger. Just inquire Alexa, Google, or Siri to starting time playing white noise or your nature sound of selection. On Alexa devices in particular, Sleep Jar's collection of sounds are besides worth trying. Its rendition of "Heavy Rain Sounds" is without peer.

Purrli

By far the most specialized of all the noise generators, Purrli emulates the sound of a purring cat for all those times when your feline pal is out of earshot. Information technology has six sliders to control things like purr variability, cat altitude, and meow frequency, and you can click the photograph icon in the superlative-right corner for a pick of cat wallpapers.

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