My wife and I have been working on sleep training our baby, and my iPhone has been very helpful in our pursuit thanks to its Background Sounds features. This feature transforms your iPhone into a white noise machine. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, playing sounds from a white noise machine can help soothe your baby and get them to settle down, giving you a moment of respite.

When Apple released iOS 15 in 2021, the operating system brought a hidden feature called Background Sounds. You can play these sounds by themselves or under a podcast, music or video streaming app.

When Apple introduced Background Sounds, there were six ambient sounds to play on a loop: rain, stream and ocean waves, which are natural sounds, and bright, balanced and dark noise, which are different pitches of white noise. But if you have iOS 26 on your device, you have over a dozen sounds to choose from now, including rain on roof and babble, which sounds like a busy cafe. 

If you want to use these sounds to lull a baby back to sleep, or for any other reason, here’s how to enable Background Sounds on your iPhone.

How to access Background Sounds from your Control Center

Instead of searching through Settings each time you want to turn Background Sounds on, here’s how you can set up a toggle in the Control Center to turn the feature on to use on your iPhone.

1. Open Control Center.
2. Tap the plus (+) sign in the top left of your screen.
3. Tap Add a Control near the bottom of your screen.
4. Tap the Background Sounds control under Hearing Accessibility to add to Control Center.

Once the Background Sounds control icon is in Control Center, tap it to start playing a background sound. Press and hold the icon to open a menu showing you the volume as well as what sound is playing. Tap Sounds to open the full list of sound options, like Ocean and Rain. Tap any of these to choose them.

Use Accessibility Shortcuts for Background Sounds

You can also set up an accessibility shortcut to turn Background Sounds on or off from your home screen or within an app. Here’s how to set it up.

1. Tap Settings.
2. Tap Accessibility.
3. Tap Accessibility Shortcut.
4. Tap Background Sounds.

Now, when you press the side button on your iPhone three times, Background Sounds will turn on. You can tap the button three times again to turn it back off.

More Background Sound options

If you want more control over Background Sounds, here’s where to go.

1. Tap Settings.
2. Tap Accessibility.
3. Tap Audio & Visual.
4. Tap Background Sounds.

Here you can turn Background Sounds on by tapping the Background Sounds toggle near the top of the menu, and you can change the Background Sound by tapping Sound and choosing a new sound. 

There are also two other toggles in this menu: Use When Media Is Playing and Stop Sounds When Locked. Tapping the toggle next to Use When Media Is Playing allows Background Sounds to keep playing while you watch a video or listen to music. And tapping the toggle next to Stop Sounds When Locked ensures Background Sounds will turn off when your device locks. If you don’t have this enabled, the sounds will continue to play when your device locks.

There are also two new menus in iOS 26: Equalizer and Stop Sounds with a Timer. Equalizer lets you adjust the tone and contour of Background Sounds, as well as balance more toward the right or left speaker or headphone. Stop Sounds with a Timer allows you to turn Background Sounds off at a specific time that you can choose or after a certain amount of time has passed. 

For more iOS news, here’s what you should know about iOS 27 and our iOS 26 cheat sheet.

Zachary McAuliffe

Senior writer

Zach began writing for CNET in November, 2021 after writing for a broadcast news station in his hometown, Cincinnati, for five years. You can usually find him hanging out with his wife, son and dog in their home. See full bio