How to Play iPhone Secret Rain Sounds to Sleep – News Block

iPhone in a charging stand.
Justin Duino / Instruction Geek

iPhone’s built-in sleep sounds can be found in Settings > Accessibility > Audio/Visual > Background Sounds. Create a custom shortcut to turn them on or off from the home screen.

Lots of people use sound machines and sound apps to sleep, but you don’t really need them if you have an iPhone. There is a rain sounds and white noise player buried deep within the Settings. We can make it easier to use.

Although not technically a “secret”, the sleep sounds built into iOS are not easy to find. Apple has them labeled “Background Sounds” and they are four levels deep in the Accessibility settings. Siri can’t start sleep sounds, so you’re stuck navigating settings just to turn it on or off.

The good news is that you can create a shortcut to drastically improve the experience. The benefit is that you don’t need to rely on a third-party app that might have annoying ads or stream all night.

How to Play Sleep Sounds on iPhone

You’ll find these sounds in your iPhone’s Accessibility settings. First, open the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad.

Tap on the "settings" application

Scroll down and select “Accessibility”.

Select "Accessibility."

Now go to “Audio/Visual”.

Gonna "Audiovisual."

Finally, we can select “Background Sounds” (that was a hike).

Tap "Background sounds."

To activate the sounds, simply move the switch at the top of the screen.

Activate "Background sounds."

There are also a few things to tweak on this page. First, you can tap on “Sound” to choose between some levels of white, ocean, rain, or stream noise.

Tap "Sound" and choose a sound from the list.

You can then adjust the volume level, choose whether you want it to play while other media is playing, and adjust the volume level as well.

Adjust the volume.

Finally, decide if you want the sounds to stop when the device is locked.

Activate the "Stop sounds when locked."

That’s all about it. This is a nice feature, but it’s not easy to get to. Let’s fix that.

How to Create an iPhone Background Sounds Shortcut

We’ll be using the iPhone Shortcuts app to create a shortcut that can turn background sounds on and off right from the home screen.

First, open the “Shortcuts” app.

Open the "shortcuts" application

Next, tap on the plus icon in the top right corner to create a new shortcut.

Now tap on “Add Action”.

Tap "Add action."

Use the search bar to find “Set Background Sounds”.

Select "Set background sounds."

Next, tap on “Rotate” in the text box and change it to “Toggle”.

Tap "Fold" and change it to "Lever."

Now we can change the name of the shortcut and customize the color and icon. Tap the dropdown arrow at the top of the screen to do so.

Tap the dropdown menu.

Lastly, select “Add to Home Screen” from the dropdown menu.

Select "Add to the home screen."

Tap “Add” on the next screen.

Tap "Add."

Now when you tap the shortcut on the home screen, it will turn sleep sounds on or off! You can disable notification of shortcuts if you want.

Open the shortcut from the home screen.

This is a much easier way to activate sleep sounds at night. It’s strange that Apple has this feature buried so deep in the settings. The fact that Siri can’t even play them, when Google Assistant has the ability, is even stranger.

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