As many tinnitus sufferers like myself know, the never-ending ringing in your ears can become unbearable at times. Sometimes white noise can help by making it harder to distinguish the ringing from other sounds. I know I’ve run fans in my bedroom while falling asleep to help distract me, for example.

You can use the iPhone’s Background Sounds feature to generate this noise for you. And with Airpods Pro, you can deliver the sound directly to a single ear and let external sounds in so you can still hear what’s going on around you.

Here’s how you do it.

  1. On your iPhone, go to Settings > Accessibility > Audio/Visual > Background Sounds
  2. Turn on Background Sounds
  3. Select the sound you want to hear. I like balanced noise for tinnitus relief.
  4. Insert your Airpods Pro to get them to connect to your phone.
  5. Activate transparency mode on the Airpods Pro to let environmental sounds through.

The background sounds will play continuously, but will be suspended for announcements from Siri and phone calls. Interestingly, background sounds are just reduced in volume by about 90% when you start playing Apple Music. There’s a setting in the Background Sounds pane that will disable the background noise while media is playing. Otherwise it will continue playing but will be reduced in volume. Background sounds resume normally after stopping any of those activities.

  • mhz@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Do you really need all those apple products? There is tone of white noise apps in the store (I use android), I use “white noise baby sleep sound by amicoolsoft” to set some rain sound with thunder and make it play for 20-40min which is enough for me to fall asleep. I find earphones/headphonse uncomfortable so I play it on my phone speaker on medium low.

    Edit: I set my feed to be sorted by “top six hours”, now I’m seeing posts from communities I’m not subscribed to like this one, it was not my intention to belittle any product. Everyone has their preferences. I need to watch what communities show up in my feed.

    • TheMusicalFruit@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      This is the apple enthusiasts community, that’s why apple products were cited. OP also didn’t say you had to buy the apple products. The post was phrased as if you already had them. It was a helpful tip, and not just for sleeping.

    • EmperorGormet@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Contrary to popular belief people like headphones. Even so this person is suggesting using the Airpods while you are moving around and interacting with people and to just have the slight background noise to help. I love my AirPods Pro’s. They have exceptional sound quality and the noise canceling mode is pretty amazing. Can we let people enjoy/be excited about things?