Hushette

What it does

On the Mac, Hushette lives in the menu bar; on iPhone, iPad and Android it is an app that keeps playing with the screen off. Pick the sounds you like and set each one's level: white, pink or brown noise, rain, distant thunder, waves, wind, a stream, crickets at night, birds at dawn, a fan or a crackling fireplace.

• Never a loop. Every sound is made as it plays, and drifts slowly: rain grows heavier and lighter, waves come in sets, wind gusts. There is no seam to catch your ear, and the app is tiny.
• Quiet for your calls. When a call starts, Hushette fades out, and fades back in when it ends.
• A mix for every part of the day. Save mixes such as Work, Reading or Sleep, and let Hushette switch between them by the clock while it plays.
• Tuned to your room. Let Hushette listen for five seconds and it shapes a noise, Room, to cover the hum of your fridge, traffic or office. Nothing it hears is recorded or kept.
• A sleep timer that fades out gently.
• Focus tones. Binaural beats for headphones and isochronic pulses that work on speakers too, at four rates from delta to beta.
• Music. Relaxing music to play alone or under your sounds. Choose Lo-fi, Piano, Guitar, Ambient, Music box or Meditation. Every song is composed as it plays, so nothing ever repeats, and it stays private: no downloads, no network. Presets keep the music too.
• Without opening it. Shortcuts actions on the Mac, iPhone and iPad; home screen widgets on iPhone, iPad and Android; a Control Center control on iOS 18 and a Quick Settings tile on Android.

Requires macOS 14 Sonoma or later, iOS or iPadOS 17 or later, or Android 8.0 or later. One App Store purchase covers Mac, iPhone and iPad; the Android version comes from Google Play.

Privacy in one paragraph

Hushette has no network access, no account and no tracking. It notices only when a call is under way, so it can pause, and it uses the microphone itself only when you ask it to tune to your room, for five seconds, without keeping anything. The full privacy policy says the same at more length.