QuietNightA sound machine with no recordings in it.
Twenty sleep sounds, generated sample by sample as they play. There is no loop point, so there is no seam to hear. The whole app is a few megabytes.
Twenty sounds, in five families
None of them is behind a paywall, a daily cap or an advert. That is not an introductory offer; it is the point of the app.
Noise
Even, featureless, the classic sleep masks.
- Brown
- Deep Brown
- Pink
- White
- Green
Water
Always moving, never the same twice.
- Rain
- Thunderstorm
- Ocean
- Stream
- Waterfall
Outdoors
A night somewhere else.
- Wind
- Crickets
- Campfire
Machines & rooms
The hum of a room that is working.
- Box Fan
- Aeroplane
- Night Train
- Air Conditioner
Tones & pulses
Slow, low and steady. Best in headphones.
- Binaural Beat
- Singing Bowl
- Heartbeat
Why synthesis actually matters
No loop, because there is nothing to loop
Most sound apps play a short clip end to end. Once you have noticed the seam you cannot un-notice it. QuietNight computes each sample as it goes, so eight hours of rain is eight hours of different rain.
Megabytes, not hundreds of megabytes
The app bundle contains zero audio files. Nothing to download before you can sleep, and nothing sitting on your phone afterwards.
Sounds that can become other sounds
Two recordings cannot cross-fade into each other without a join. Two synthesised sounds can, which is what makes the night scenes below possible at all.
Level-matched, and it will not crackle
Every sound is measured and trimmed to sit at the same loudness, and the mix runs through a soft limiter. Stack four of them at full and it compresses gracefully.
Night scenes
A scene is a mix that turns into another mix on a schedule. The storm passes while you are still awake to hear it; by the time you are not, it is brown noise.
Four scenes are built in and free — Storm to Calm, Drift Off, Forest Night and a twenty-five minute Power Nap that ends on its own. You can build your own from any sounds and any lengths.
And the rest of it
An alarm that rises
Most alarms go from silence to a siren in one step. QuietNight starts the sound you chose at a level you cannot hear, up to thirty minutes early, and raises it until you surface.
It is straight with you about how it reaches you: through the audio if sound is still playing, through a notification if iOS has put the app to sleep. Both are armed every night, and the app says which is which.
Describe tonight
Type a sentence — "hotel room with a loud air conditioner, up at 6:30" — and get a scene composed from the sounds the app already has, plus an alarm to match.
This is the one feature that uses a server. It is off until you switch it on, it sends only what you typed, and the scene that comes back is checked against the app's own catalogue before it can play.
A journal, not a sleep score
Every night is written down on your phone: what played, how long, when you put the phone down, how the alarm went. Over a fortnight it tells you the mix you settle fastest with.
There is no sleep score, because the app does not measure sleep. It stays on the phone, and you can export the whole thing whenever you like.
Shortcuts and Focus
Seven actions: play a sound, start a scene, start a mix, resume last night, set a timer, stop, and read last night back. Start a scene when Sleep Focus turns on; ask Siri for a thunderstorm.
What it costs
Free
Free, with no advert anywhere
- All twenty sounds, unlimited, forever
- Mix as many as you like, each at its own level
- Four built-in scenes, and one of your own
- Three designed scenes a month
- Sleep timer, background playback, Lock Screen
- Ten alarm wake-ups a month
- The last seven nights of the journal
QuietNight Plus
$2.99 / month · $9.99 / year · $14.99 once
- Unlimited scenes of your own
- Unlimited designs and night reviews
- Unlimited alarm wake-ups
- Unlimited saved mixes
- Every night in the journal, not just the last week
There is no free trial, and the lifetime unlock is a single payment that does not renew. Plus never unlocks a sound, because no sound is locked.
Said plainly
QuietNight makes no claim about your sleep, your health or your concentration. It plays sounds, and it wakes you up. Whether that is worth anything is your call.
There is no account and no sign-in. There is no analytics SDK and no advertising SDK. The journal never leaves your phone. The only thing that is ever sent anywhere is the sentence you type into the designer, and only after you have read a screen explaining that.
Turn on Airplane Mode and everything except the designer still works.