Show HN: I built a simple ambient sound app with no ads or subscriptions (ambisounds.app)

This is fantastic, thank you. Recently when trying to sleep away from home, I went looking for a noise app and was grossed out by the state of the available apps, just like you said.

BTW One unfortunate feature that many noise apps/websites have (including Apple Music's official noise buttons) is that after a few minutes, they fade out and back in or have some other jarring transition when repeating. This is far from ideal for sleep, meditation, etc. So this is an enhancement request, if your app doesn't already solve this ;)

I'm also curious: do you think that the cost of maintaining the app (keeping it up to date with newer iOS versions, for instance) will eventually dissuade you from keeping it available in its pristine state? I've wondered why there seem to be ZERO free apps by hobbyists on the App Store in categories like this...

I love the idea, and thanks for doing this. I would like to create free apps too just for the heck of it but one of the biggest issues I find with creating free app store apps is that, regardless of whether you are charging money or not, you need to keep feeding Apple $100 per year, which is excruciating, especially for countries where the developer population is much higher and the income disparity is high. Since the Play Store only charges 25$ ish and one time, it is much more feasible to do it on the Play Store, hence the availability of such apps is more on Play Store.

Wow this looks incredible! I quite like the Overcast model where you can optionally pay a little just to support the author rather than for extra features or nagware.

Just downloaded! Thanks for your efforts on it.

I was thinking of building something similar to the point of even learning music production, for the similar reasons you have listed. I think I can postpone my idea now.

I don’t think many people would mind watching once a day ad just to support your work. But, whatever makes you happy.

Lovely! Couple questions…

- where did you get the noises, are they your own recordings?

- how hard it is to support earlier iOS? For folks like me who are on older phones that cannot be upgraded anymore (iOS 16 personally)

Thanks for this - de-installed an alternative and installed this.

Any thoughts of some sort of equalizer feature? I like brown noise for sleeping in noisy environments, and would love to be able to add a bit more bass to your sample. (Brown noise plus some Airplane is actually pretty good.)

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Side thought - there needs to be a club (with a curated list?) for simple apps that work well, and commit to staying ad-free. I'd love to be able to search amongst such apps prior to auditioning options from the App Store. (I mean, it would be great to be able to filter for such apps in the App Store itself, but that's not going to happen.)

Downloaded this. It drowned out perfectly the noise from my upstairs neighbour sitting on her balcony watching YouTube videos above my open bedroom window. Thank you!

This is great. I’ve been looking for something like this for a long time after giving up on Portal. Thank you

ok what is Your TOMO llc mean???

does we really need to register LLC to upload into appstore???? that's seem excessive no? especially if your app isnt generating profit

For those unaware, iOS includes a limited selection of such sounds. You cant mix or anything, but it might be good enough, at least it is for me. Search for Background Sounds in settings.

Thanks for making this avialable.

I am Linux (ZorinOS, FTW) and I use SoundScape https://github.com/ddanilov/soundscape

There is https://freesound.org/ which can provide a multitude of free sounds too.

I'm a longtime fan of Web-based myNoise: https://mynoise.net/

Let's not forget https://neal.fun/ambient-chaos/

Sounds like a convienet app, but is there any advantage to just looping an ambient sound clip in a generic audio player?

My goodness, thank you. The other white noise apps I use for my kids when we travel work on a subscription. I have to remember to subscribe, to play a single sound, then cancel my subscription. Made me want to learn iOS development out of spite.

Very nice :) The ability to add my own mp3 loops would be choice. Is that possible? I’m choosy about the exact cafe-train mix I work to…

This is awesome, did you use SwiftUI for this?

Wonderful, thanks so much!

You're doing God's work. I used to use my white noise generator for a lot of things-- not just, "creating blinding noise" but sampling authentic pink and white noise had applications where having this over an aux cable was pretty handy.

...now my buttfucking IPhone has no aux out and the app I use charges 6.99 to access the mixer. Go figure.

Fantastic. Love it. Love the collection of so many sounds.

One request I have: please play the white noise on the "other" track, so that one can also listen to music and white noise simultaneously. See how "White noise by sleep pillow" does it.

There are some formatting issues (i.e. stuff is off screen), but nbd, still usable. Perhaps that prevents me from layering multiple sounds, though.

Congrats! Two comments after trying the app out:

1) The thunder sounds loop too quickly; can you find sources that are longer perhaps (like 15+ mins)? 2) Can you try to source more unique thunder sounds?

Thank you!

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Really nicely done. Love the mixing capabilities, that was particularly nicely implemented.

If you're on Android and want something similar, try Atmosphere.

For years now it's the first app I install on every phone I buy.

It's ad-supported though.