How to use it
- Pick a sound and press Play. It starts quietly and fades in.
- To calm your mind or meditate, pick a zen recording or soft tone and rest your attention on it. When your mind wanders, come back to the sound.
- To cover the noise around you, pick one from the last group. Set the volume just loud enough, not louder.
- For sleep, choose Stop after: the sound fades out gently over the last minute.
Zen recordings load the first time you play them (up to about 1 MB), then work offline. Soft tones and noise are made live in your browser, so they work offline and never repeat exactly. On some phones sound stops when the screen locks.
Why it works
Zen recordings and soft tones are for meditating or winding down: sounds you can rest your attention on. Which one feels calming is personal, so try a few. The last group is for masking noise. The recordings come from Pixabay under its free content licence.
For the masking sounds, a 2024 meta-analysis found white or pink noise gave a small boost on short lab attention tasks for people with ADHD or high ADHD traits, but slightly worsened performance for people without ADHD. It found no studies of brown noise (Nigg et al., 2024 (opens in a new tab)). For sleep, reviews found no consistent benefit and low-quality evidence; steady noise may help most when it masks outside noise (Vazzaz et al., 2025 (opens in a new tab)). So pick the sound you like: brown noise and waves are a matter of taste.
Protect your hearing. The WHO suggests keeping your device at no more than 60% of its maximum volume and giving your ears regular breaks (WHO (opens in a new tab)).
When to use it
- Meditating, winding down, or taking a quiet break between games.
- A noisy home, office or classroom, to cover chatter and sudden sounds.
- Studying or working, if a steady sound helps you focus.
- Falling asleep, with the timer on.
More tools
Not medical advice. This is a wellbeing tool, not a treatment. If things feel heavy, talk to someone.