Baby Sleep

The sounds, sorted by where they come from

The sounds sit in groups: nature with rain, waves, a campfire, forest, a stream, night, a heartbeat and a waterfall. Transport with car, bus, plane and train — the category that exists because every parent has watched a child sleep the whole motorway and wake at a red light. The home with an extractor hood, fan, hairdryer, radio, vacuum cleaner, washing machine, shower, cat, clock and fridge. And finally white noise in three variants.

One tap starts the sound. The chosen tile gets a ring around it, so you can see what is playing without reading anything.

Every sound lives in the app. Nothing is fetched along the way, and no connection is required.

• Over twenty sounds in four groups
• Everything is in the app — works offline
• One tap starts and stops
• The sound loops with no audible seam

The timer that wakes nobody

A sleep timer can be set from one minute up to several hours. When the time runs out the sound stops — but not abruptly: it fades over five seconds, so the child is not woken by silence arriving too fast.

The volume is set inside the app, next to the timer, so you can turn it down without reaching for the phone's buttons and missing in the dark.

Playback runs in a background service rather than in the screen. You can lock the phone, put it down and control the sound from the lock screen — it keeps going.

Built to be used in a dark room

The app has a dark theme with a starry sky as its background, and it can be locked or follow the phone. It sounds like a detail, but it is the most-used feature in the app: it gets opened at three in the morning, in a room where light is the last thing anyone wants.

The tiles are large enough to hit one-handed, and the player stays fixed at the bottom however far you have scrolled.

The menu holds the three things an app like this owes you: what the app is, the privacy policy, and a data-sharing switch you turn on or off yourself.