Oliver Haslam on November 3, 2019, 7:35 am

How To Have HomePod Play Ambient Sounds Like White Noise, Rain, Others

Here’s how to have your HomePod play Ambient Sounds like white noise, rain, stream, fireplace, and others.

Now that Apple has been able to get iOS 13.2.1 for HomePod out the door after canning iOS 13.2 due to HomePods being bricked, users have Ambient Sounds to try. The feature plays sounds like white noise, the ocean, rain, and more and is great for relaxing or drifting off to sleep.

And because they’re perfect for use when trying to get to sleep, they can also be used as a sleep timer, too. Users will get to choose from seven different sounds at the time of writing, including:

Stream
White noise
Rain
Night
Ocean
Fireplace
Forest

Now that you know which sound you want, making the HomePod play it is dead easy. Just say “Hey Siri, play white noise.” You can substitute “white noise” for another sound, of course. If you’d rather a random sound, just say “Hey Siri, play Ambient Sounds.”

Going back to that sleep timer, it’s super simple to use. Just start an ambient sound like we mentioned earlier and then say “Hey Siri, set a sleep timer.” Siri while ask how long you want the timer to be set for and once you’ve responded, you’re all done.

We’d expect Siri to get more Ambient Sounds to choose from in the future, but for now, it has more than enough of the basics to be useful.