Create Your Own White Noise With The Freedom Of Noisli
Noisli ($0.99) by Stefano Merlo is the official iOS app of Noisli.com. If you’re a fan of customizable white noise sounds to help you relax or focus, then Noisli is the app for you. The app is similar to other apps out there, such as Thunderspace and Windy.
I love white noise — it’s the most effective way for me to relax before I actually go to bed every night. I used to listen to music or podcasts before bed, but I ended up realizing that those actually keep me up, because I just get too into the subject or tunes. So I turned to white noise, and it always works. When I stumbled on Noisli in the App Store, I was intrigued by the simple and clean interface — I actually have never heard of Noisli.com before, but now it’s becoming one of my favorite white noise apps.
As I mentioned, the interface for Noisli is very minimalistic, yet elegant at the same time. The background is a solid color that blends into the iOS status bar, and it gradually changes color, which is actually quite soothing. The icons that represent each kind of white noise are very plain, but they easily get the point across. There’s no need to guess what each sound is, because the icons clearly show you what they are.
Even if you’ve never used Noisli before, the app is super easy to understand and use. There are basically three “pages” of sounds to choose from (16 sounds total) and you just need to tap on the sound you want to play. The best thing about Noisli is the fact that you can actually have multiple sounds playing at once, so this is where the customization part comes in.
Once a sound starts playing, users are even able to customize the volume of each sound individually thanks to the volume bar that will appear underneath the sound’s icon. So if you are feeling really creative, you can activate several at once, and then tweak each one so that your combination has more of an emphasis on one or two sounds over the rest. It’s definitely a breath of fresh air when compared to other white noise apps, as they usually just play one track at a time.
Now, since Noisli gives you freedom to create your own combinations, the app does give users the option to save their combos. To do this, just swipe all the way to the left and you can give your currently playing white noise combo a name, and then save it for quick access later.
Usually, if you are using white noise to fall asleep, you probably don’t want the thing to be playing all through the night, until you wake up the next day. Fortunately, Noisli does have a sleep timer, and it can be enabled by tapping on the button in the bottom right corner. You can set it to your own time by dragging your finger vertically across the hour or minute sections. Another option for the sleep timer is to have it fade out when it’s going off, so it’s more of a gradual effect, rather than just shutting off suddenly.
I’ve gone through several white noise apps, and while Noisli may not look as gorgeous as Thunderspace or Windy, I do enjoy the fact that I am able to create my own combination of noises that will work for me. And sometimes, that’s actually the more important thing when it comes to white noise apps — it’s about the noise, not how the app looks.
I did encounter some glitches during my time with the app, but this was pretty minor. It only occurred on the combos screen, when I would try and create a new combo (without any sounds playing) and then try and name it. The text seemed to get stuck, so it became a jumbled mess, and I had to quit and launch the app again to get rid of it. This was the only problem I had with the app, though.
I recommend picking up Noisli if you are in search of a white noise app that can be customized to what works for you. Of course, the app does only come with basic sounds, but hopefully the developers of Noisli decide to add more sounds in the future. It’s still a very polished app for white noise.
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