White Noise Baby: monitor crying, play sounds

White Noise Baby is an application for Google Android and Apple iOS devices that provides you with soothing sounds and monitoring options.

The application looks like any other "white noise" application on first glance, but if you dig a bit deeper, you will notice that it offers features that the bulk of apps don't support.

The main idea behind the app is simple: play sounds or classical music to help your baby sleep better. While it is designed with babies in mind, nothing is keeping you from using it for yourself, or other people instead.

If you have a hard time sleeping or relaxing because of background noise -- noisy neighbors, busy street, people chatting, construction work, electronic devices -- you may benefit from white noise apps as these tend to block distracting noise.

White Noise Baby

The application's interface may be a bit confusing on first run. White Noise Baby displays the available sounds on first start. You will see ads at the top, as the application is ad-driven unless you upgrade, and the controls at the bottom.

A tap on any of the available sounds -- you can scroll to list more -- starts playback right away. You get the usual assortment of white, brown and "insert color" noise sounds, but also sounds of everyday items such as a vacuum cleaner, air conditioner, or truck ride.

You may switch to music instead, to play classical music instead. This includes soothing works by Mozart, Beethoven or Chopin that you may play instead with a tap. The only controls provided are to increase or decrease the volume of the sound.

White Noise Baby supports an add-on app that is called White Noise Market. The add-on is available for free, and allows you to download hundreds of songs using it.

Please note that you need to sign in with Google or Facebook for full access. A "download as guest" option is provided, but it is limited when it comes to the number of downloads. The market app is pretty heavy on the full screen ads front, so keep that in mind as well.

But White Noise Baby has more to offer than that. You may open a baby rattle with touch and shake controls, or use the monitoring feature.

The monitor works as follows: it tries to recognize crying noises, and if it does, starts to play soothing sounds automatically. This is obviously not something that replaces parents, but it can be useful for times where you may not notice the crying right away.

The app features a timer furthermore, a log, and a set of preferences to enable left handed play mode, enable baby mode for fewer interruptions by setting the ringer and notification volume to silent, or setting it to auto-play on launch.

Closing Words

White Noise Baby is a handy mobile application not only to soothe babies, but for anyone else who benefits from filtering out noise in the environment. It comes with interesting extras, monitoring especially, which you may find useful in some situations. I cannot say how well the crying detection works on the other hand.

Now You: Do you use white noise applications or devices?