Take the beach with you anywhere and relax with Sunny

Sunny ~ Sleep Relax Meditate at the Beach with Calm Wave and Ocean Sounds ($1.99) by Franz Bruckhoff is the third white noise app from the developer, joining the ranks of the amazing Thunderspace and Windy. If you enjoy white noise to help you relax, and prefer the sounds of the ocean, then Sunny is the app for you.

I’m a bit of an insomniac, but I have found over the years that white noise can really help me get some rest. While I think any white noise works for me, I always prefer the sounds of water, like streaming rivers and oceans. While there are a lot of these apps on the App Store, I have always come back to the apps of Franz Bruckhoff because they’re beautiful and the recordings are some of the best I’ve heard. When Sunny hit the App Store, I was eager to add it to my collection.

Just like Windy, Sunny features gorgeous artwork that you will fall in love with the moment you see it. There are six different locations in the app, and they are all stunning (though you have to unlock the other five). These images all have a parallax effect going on, meaning that it will have that 3-D shift so that it feels like you’re actually there. I love these effects, but you can adjust the sensitivity to reduce the motion if it isn’t your thing.

The recordings in Sunny are done in full stereoscopic 3-D, so it’s highly recommended to use this app with a good pair of earbuds or headphones. Just like Thunderspace and Windy, the realistic tracks in Sunny will make it feel like you just sat down on the beach and the water is just coming up to you. The recordings for each individual location will be slightly different from each other, but if you love the ocean in general, you’ll have a hard time deciding which is your favorite.

Just as in its predecessor, Sunny features short stories for each spot that you can read by tapping on the feather in the top right corner. The words will fly onto the screen, as if summoned by magic, and you can scroll through the words as you normally would. Tapping anywhere on the screen will dismiss them. Users can access the sleep timer in the top left corner if they want the app to stop playing audio after a certain amount of time.

While the default recordings should be good enough for most, Sunny does give users the option to customize the recording. This is done by tapping on the sliders button in the bottom right corner, and you can adjust the strength of individual things like music, rain on tent, rain, and bird sounds. There is also a slider to modify the overall volume of Sunny audio.

The more you relax with Sunny, the more it pays off. As you keep relaxing with the app for at least three minutes, you will earn “sunrays,” which are like points. These can be used to unlock new locations, or you can purchase access through a $0.99 IAP if you are impatient. You can even link Sunny up with the native Health app to have it read your average heart rate from HealthKit and see how your heart rate changes as you unwind.

I love white noise, but my absolute favorite is the sound of the ocean. I’ve only been using Sunny for a brief amount of time, but it’s definitely my new favorite out of the trio of white noise apps from the developer. The artwork is breathtaking, the tracks put you right in the middle of paradise, and it is intuitive to use.

I highly recommend checking out Sunny if you enjoy relaxing to the sound of ocean waves hitting the sand. You can get Sunny on the App Store as a universal download for $1.99.