White Noise Reviews

I’ve been using WhiteNoise for over 10 years. Love it. Or at least, I used to. In the past, I would leave it on all night and it would drain about 20-30% of the battery. That includes about 7 different iPhone and 5 different iPads over a decade.

Now, with the new iPad Pro (11 inch), running the latest iOS, the battery drains 100% in about 6 hours. (WiFi and Bluetooth off, all other apps closed, screen off) Then I wake up, bc the sound stops. I battled Apple for a while about this, they finally replaced my iPad, and the same thing happens on the new iPad. For some reason, an iPad Pro (12.9 inch) does not have this problem. Battery drains about 20% in 12 hours, with all the background apps on, WiFi and Bluetooth on.

I’ve read online about other people having this exact same issue, so it must be one of two things: Something inherently wrong with the new ipads (or certain models. Seems the Air has the same issue) Or, something inherently wrong with a recent update of WhiteNoise .

I tried to contact the developers about this, but got no reply. I simply cannot use WhiteNoise (I refuse to plug in my iPad at night when it is at 98% battery simply to use a white noise app that can’t last 7 hours.)

DONE. UNRELIABLE. MUSIC “PLAYS” BUT WITH NO VOLUME SO FORGET ABOUT WAKING UP TO IT! TIRED OF WAKING UP LATE BECAUSE THE MUSIC IS AT VOLUME LEVEL 0.

UPDATE:
I don’t know what they did on the most recent update, but since then my music alarms do not go past half volume! I do not have fade set, and I learned a LONG time ago to check my music volume (since it is separate from the sounds volume) before setting the alarm. I play a little random music, make sure the volume is all of the way up, and then set the alarm. While a PITA, at least that fixed the issue of the alarm going off with no volume but now it just sits at half volume! NOT GOOD! For now I’ll keep with it and trying but after years of using WhiteNoise and lots of downloaded sounds, I may end up changing after all to something that wakes me up instead of me waking up before it.

PREVIOUS: Let me delete stock sounds!
That is probably my only complaint. I’m good as long as I remember to check the volume of my music before going to bed. Quite a few times the sound was all of the way down so no alarm. But it is really annoying to have to keep sounds I will never use like the drier, fan, clock, etc. they are just annoying to me- please pick one sample like waves to have to keep and let us delete the others!

I’ve used WhiteNoise happily for years when I sleep at night with my phone plugged in and charging always to 100% overnight. But in the last 4 months I noticed my phone wouldn’t charge past 60% overnight. I thought it was my phone that was the issue and went through weeks of troubleshooting with no fix - only to find out it was the white noise app that was doing it. Switched to another sleep app and my phone went back to charging to 100% and working perfectly. Very disappointed in whatever they decided to change in WhiteNoise recently and can no longer recommend it. Also should mention it can sometimes crash and will wake me up in the middle of the night - another recent development that never used to happen.

I have been using WhiteNoise since at least 2013 and I’ve loved it. Sometime last in the last year or two the free app I had been using all the time would quit if I went out of WhiteNoise . I hated that! So I paid the upgraded subscription - it felt totally justified after my very happy 7 years using it for free! - price just to avoid WhiteNoise quitting when I went in and out of it. But it’s a freak’n hit or miss situation - totally frustrating! - that most of the time WhiteNoise will continue it’s sound even if I’m not “in WhiteNoise ” but way too often it will turn off if I go out of WhiteNoise . I’m giving an app I LOVE 2 stars because it’s ridiculous that there’s no consistency that can be counted on in regards to how I want WhiteNoise to perform. If I want the white noise airplane sound on to drown out my loud sister so I can scroll Twitter *peacefully* lol, then I want it on. I don’t want it to go off just because I’m using a different app - ESPECIALLY since 90% of the time WhiteNoise acts “normally! - I want to be able to drown out my sister regardless of going from the White Noise app to another! Membership ($’s) should have at least that privilege!

UPDATE: I updated WhiteNoise and now it seems to be working like I above complained it didn’t! If it remains true to its old form, I give WhiteNoise 5 stars!

Love WhiteNoise for sleeping. Can't sleep without it. Cuts out the different noises that may wake u through the night. Use to have a fan running at night while I slept. 365 days but in the winter it makes it too cold but still had to use the fan. I've been using WhiteNoise for 5 years. The clock has different colors so if u want it to light the room or keep it dark u can & still use the clock. You can put 2 together or just pick anyone that would work for u. I do recommend it!!
Update: I have used WhiteNoise probably 10 years now but on the last few updates to WhiteNoise I’ve not been happy with it. If you don’t put it in clock mode the phone sleep mode kicks in. So when my cats wake it up in the middle of the night & I want to see what time it is the phone is asleep but the sound is still playing. It defeats the whole purpose of having it for a clock. Try & fix it on your next update it’s very annoying.

My doctor has prescribed a med with interrupted sleep as a side effect. I downloaded White Noise to help “lullaby” me back to sleep in the middle of the night. It plays through my Bluetooth enabled hearing aids. It helps some, certainly better than silence.

White noise offers a considerable selection of satisfactory sounds and the option of creating a playlist to vary them. I found it worth encouraging the developer with a paid upgrade of less than a dollar. It’s worth that.

WhiteNoise does have it’s issues:

The option menus are not very intuitive, and they are confusing
There are a few “tips” but no manual or help function
The upgrade wipes all the playlist, mix creations, and manually recorded sounds. It leaves the old Lite app in place with a different colored icon. It’s just odd and awkward. I don’t resent spending the dollar, but I can’t see that it buys anything really
The volume of the sounds vary a lot perceptually from one another. It’s just about impossible to create a playlist that does not have jarring volume changes. WhiteNoise really needs the ability to adjust the volume of playlist entries individually.
There is a shuffle function that reorders the playlist but no capacity for creating a specific desired order by moving items up or down manually

I love the variety of sounds that are available, and, coupled with the White Noise Store, you can keep as many sounds as you’d like. I use WhiteNoise on lunch breaks, as I sleep in my car, and, oftentimes, at there’s at least one person who blares out loud, obnoxious music, or talks on their phone while I’m trying to recharge my batteries with a short power nap. WhiteNoise has higher-pitched sounds(Pink Noise) for the booming bass-based obnoxious music that someone will blare out from their car stereo, and, lower-pitched sounds(Room Noise, Brown Noise, Gray Noise, and Space Station Sleep Room, just to name a few) to drown out the higher-pitched music, or conversation. The timer function is great, and there’s even a Fade-In option that let’s you have your selected wake noise fade in slowly. And, here is what cost WhiteNoise a 5th Star: When the Fade-In option is activated, your selected Wake Noise fades in gradually, but, your sleep noise stops. Suddenly. And, THAT wakes me up BEFORE the Wake Noise starts. If the Sleep Noise were to slowly start to fade, I’d say, 30 seconds before the Wake Noise were to kick in, AND THEN, the Wake Noise were to slowly fade in at, say, 15-20 seconds before the scheduled wake-up time, that would make WhiteNoise an even better investment!

I’ve tried a lot of different clock/alarm clock apps. This is my favorite so far. Two things would make it perfect. Firstly, it’s too easy to dismiss the clock when you’re in clock mode. Any place you touch on the display dismisses the clock. This is not ideal when you’re trying to use WhiteNoise for an alarm clock as it’s too easy to unintentionally dismiss the clock. This could be easily remedied by putting a button someplace on the face of the clock that you had to press to dismiss the clock. The other feature I would like is to be able to use any sound for an alarm sound not just the ones packaged with WhiteNoise . If it had those two features they would get five stars from me.

I work in a noisy office that I’ve not been able to block out and WhiteNoise has saved my sanity. I’d give it 5 stars except for 2 small things. One of which is you have download a separate app to download additional sounds. If this is a feature of your app, I shouldn’t have to use another tool. Second thing is when you create a playlist, the default time for each item is 10 minutes. I wish there were a setting to reduce that so I wouldn’t have to adjust each item in the playlist.

Other than these two annoyances, WhiteNoise offers a great variety of sounds thanks to the community uploading. I used the free app version for a long time before paying and I wish I hadn’t waited. The stock sounds are decent, but the additional ones you can download are great.

If you’re someone who lays there and hears your older house “settling” and maybe it freaks you out a bit, this is a great app. When you know your house is secure and safe, turn it on so you can’t hear the tiny little things that might wake you up.

Pets roaming around, distant thunder, an old two-story house that freaks and sways with the wind and just settles and adjusts constantly are all things that keep people waking up and not getting a good night’s sleep. This will help drown out those noises.

If you still want to be able to hear, just don’t turn it up so loud but let it cover the softer noises good stuff! Love making my own mixes!

I don’t ever really think to write reviews but this is the best noise app! I have used a generic noise machine my whole life and I downloaded WhiteNoise needing some noise as I was sleeping in the living room that night and my AC won’t turn on so it was silent in the room and I couldn’t fall asleep. I CANNOT believe how AMAZING this is and how I didn’t have it sooner. The fact that you can mix your own sounds together is makes this worth every penny. And when I’m just chilling around the house I’ll use it to just keep me calm and it really works! I am in love with WhiteNoise and I recommend it to everyone! Money well spent! Thank you so much to the developers!!!

I use WhiteNoise every time I travel. I appreciate the selection of sounds to mask out disturbing noises when I sleep, and I appreciate the clock display which I can check usually at night without my glasses. All in all, it does more than I had expected when I got it, and I am completely satisfied. New thoughts in September 2018– I found that by making a downward stroke on the digital clock face I can decrease the illumination of the clock to the point where it is just a visible, but not distracting as it sits on a small portable table-top easel or phone holder(I suppose you’d say)facing The head of my bed, wherever that may be in the world in travel.
2021 New thought? Nope. Still love it.

Great app and it’s free! Sound choices are many. I stick with a mix of rain sounds myself. I was able to give up my year round fan use, which was too drying for my sinuses and took up too much room and needed an extension cord.
My husband is a music producer and doesn’t care for a white noise background when sleeping, so I use WhiteNoise with one earbud.

The sounds help drown out thevhusban’d snoring, while still allowing me to hear my kids if they call out during the night.

I am an insomniac and take naps during the day. I don’t use the earbud then, and again the sound is perfect for drowning out my boisterous teens while I sleep.

My only complaint is that I use it on my iPhone and alarms will still go off, but not in my Bluetooth earbud. Otherwise WhiteNoise has so many sounded choices, can custom blend your mix and save it, and has great setting choices.

Its the perfect app. My two daughters use it too m, but their mix is different than mine and that’s part time f the perks.

I cannot recommend WhiteNoise enough!

White Noise is my savior from all things irritating and outrageous and drowns out much of the insanity we are subjected to as commuters and travelers: having to listen to ear buds and head phones that are not remotely restricted to the person wearing them, rude, self-involved hair balls who don't even bother to use headphones on their devices, people who speak loudly on cell phones because they think they will hear better if they talk louder, and the appalling and truly disgusting epidemic of men who no longer carry handkerchiefs and cluelessly subject everyone around them to the vile sounds of them relentlessly sucking the snot back into their heads ad nauseum. For these reasons and many more, I am grateful for White Noise.

WhiteNoise is a must have/go to for the traveler! It saves you on an airplane by drowning out the chatter around you so you can sleep. It eliminates weird hotel noises and the too loud tv next door problem. The clock feature means you can unplug the alarm clock and use the bedside outlet to charge your device and still know what time it is in the middle of the night.

The sounds and mixes are so incredibly customizable. Love that I can make a sound that is just right so that I don’t even hear it, but I don’t hear anything else either.

Definitely among my most used apps when I travel. I’ve used and loved and recommended it for years now. Thank you for making such a great, useful, intuitive app.

Updating my review to five stars because I found out you can disable those annoying new sound postcards! Thank goodness!

The paid version of WhiteNoise is worth every penny! I am a horrible sleeper who wakes at even the slightest noise, and am able to detect the repeat in most sound tracks, and that will keep me awake. However, many of the sounds on WhiteNoise have perfect loops and no distinguishing pattern, so I sleep great!

What cost it a star: that stupid splash noise when there is a pop up about new sounds or some such nonsense. I never read it. All I know is it’s very annoying, and very jarring, to set a sound to sleep, put the phone down, only to be jolted by the sudden, loud splash! Get rid of that and you’ll have a perfect app.

I've used a white noise machine for 20 years or more to block out background sound so that I can sleep. I had tried apps before on my phone, but they didn't come close to the same range of sounds that my white noise machine could block. However, recently, the batteries corroded my white noise machine and so I had to look for an option. This time I tried a few White Noise apps, and this one came the closest to re-creating the full spectrum of white noise that blocks everything I need it to block. I love that you can combine several sounds, and they are all quality. I play the white noise through a blue tooth speaker to really get a full rich blocking sound effect. It is the very best out there, I can’t sleep without it.

I work from home, as does my wife. Ever since we moved my office to the room with the back door and my dad moved in with us, there’s been a lot of foot traffic and ambient noise near my desk. White Noise is invaluable — I’ve had a thunderstorm in my head for days now, blocking out all the footsteps, dog barking, and general hubbub that happens while I’m trying to concentrate.

One feature request, though (and I’m guessing the developers have heard this before): I would love it if the sounds faded in or out on start and stop rather than being so abrupt. I can see how that might be a complicated addition since the noise is generated rather than strictly a recording, but it’s very jarring to turn it off and on. Other than that, I use white noise more than any other app these days, except perhaps mail and messages. Thanks for a great app!

I bought WhiteNoise in 2010 with the birth of my first child. Out of hundreds apps I owned in the last 14 years, this is the one I kept using it for different reasons, including my other three children. Over a decade ago, even the New York Times paper published the innovation behind WhiteNoise. If you are looking nothing more than white noise, this is the 5 star app. There might be others but WhiteNoise has been getting the job done for me since 2010. So good that even got me to sweet dreams while holding my kids when they were babies. The list of white noises were perfectly chosen, as well as the ability to mix them like a typical campfire by the sea, or storm in a forest. Since 2010, my essentials in a diaper’s bag are: diapers, formula, wipes, water, and my phone with WhiteNoise in it. The rest is accessory. This is not like many other app to please your personal test; it’s actually a problem solver.

Five stars. What a great app! Simply create and combine audio loops for whatever background noise you need to help you sleep or focus, whether it’s needed to drown out real sounds around you or fill a too-quiet space with something your brain needs. That functionality combined with the user-sources Market Place for a massive selection of loops is *kissy hand gesture*. Been a user for years and was just recommending it for the umpteenth time to a friend when I realized I’d never come here to review it. To the dev/product team for WhiteNoise, really, well done and MUCH appreciated.