Realistic focus sounds, generated live in your browser
Focus Sounds is a free background sound mixer for work, study and sleep. You can layer rain, a crackling fireplace, ocean waves, a mountain stream, wind, forest birds, night crickets, distant thunder, a fan, an airplane cabin, white, pink and brown noise, and binaural beats or isochronic tones. Every sound is built from scratch in your browser while you listen, using models of how the real thing makes noise. Rain is made of thousands of separate drops and a fire of clusters of crackles and pops. Each wave rises, breaks and fizzes away as foam. Set the volume and tone of each sound, pick a variation such as light or heavy rain, and run a Pomodoro or sleep timer alongside. No sign-up, no downloads, and nothing is uploaded.
How to use Focus Sounds
- Pick a ready-made mix such as Deep work, Rainy cabin or Forest morning, or tap any sound card to switch it on. Sound starts straight away. The first time you use a sound, it takes a moment to build.
- Set each sound’s volume with its slider, and the overall level with Volume at the top.
- Fine-tune a sound with its ⚙ button. Slide Darker / Brighter to change its tone, and choose a variation where there is one: Light, Steady or Heavy rain; Calm, Rolling or Rough waves; Breeze, Gusty or Strong wind; Fireplace or Campfire.
- Start the focus timer if you like working in sprints, or set Stop sounds after to fall asleep with sound that fades out on its own.
- Save the mix to My mixes so it is one tap away next time, or share it with a link.
Press K anywhere on the page, or Space after clicking the player, to play or pause. Sound keeps playing in a background tab, and where your browser supports it, the media keys and lock-screen controls can play and pause it too.
All 15 sounds and their variations
| Sound | Variations | What you hear | Good for |
|---|---|---|---|
| White noise | — | An even, bright hiss across all frequencies | Masking voices and office chatter |
| Pink noise | — | Softer than white, with more weight in the lows, close to steady rainfall | Reading, study, long sessions |
| Brown noise | — | A deep, smooth rumble like a distant waterfall | Deep work, and anyone who finds white noise too sharp |
| Rain | Light, Steady, Heavy | Separate drops close by and far away, over a soft wash of rainfall | Writing, reading, falling asleep |
| Distant thunder | — | Low rolling rumbles every so often, each one different | Adding a storm to rain |
| Ocean waves | Calm, Rolling, Rough | Waves that swell, break and wash back as fizzing foam | Calm focus, winding down |
| Stream | Gentle, Lively | Water babbling over stones, made of hundreds of tiny bubbles | Study, creative work |
| Wind | Breeze, Gusty, Strong | Air that rises and falls in gusts, from a light breeze to a strong wind | Background texture under other sounds |
| Forest birds | Morning chorus, Quiet forest | Several birds singing from different directions and distances | Relaxed concentration, mornings |
| Night crickets | — | A field of crickets chirping at their own pace | Evenings and sleep |
| Fireplace | Fireplace, Campfire | Crackles, pops and the odd shifting log over a quiet, breathing flame | Cosy focus, reading |
| Fan | Low, High | A box fan’s airy whoosh with a faint blade hum | Sleep and steady masking |
| Airplane cabin | — | The low, even drone of a cabin at cruising height | Long sessions, sleep |
| Binaural beats | Beat 1–40 Hz | Two pure tones, one in each ear, heard as a slow pulse | Headphone listening |
| Isochronic tones | Beat 1–40 Hz | One tone that pulses on and off | The same idea on speakers |
Why these sounds feel real instead of looped
Most free noise generators play a short recording on repeat, or one filtered noise that never changes. After a few minutes your ear picks out the loop or the hiss and stops ignoring it. Focus Sounds builds each sound from how it happens in nature:
- Rain is thousands of separate drops at different distances. Some tap on leaves and hard surfaces, and some plink into puddles with the rising pitch of a tiny air bubble, all over a soft wash of rain falling further away.
- Fire has no steady background noise. The crackling comes in bursts, with louder pops, short sizzles and now and then a settling log, over a quiet flame that breathes in and out.
- Waves swell slowly, break in a broad roar and then fizz away as foam while the next one builds. No two waves are the same height or length.
- Birds are generated phrase by phrase: songs, whistles, trills and chirps from several birds at different distances. The farther birds sound softer and duller, with faint echoes from the trees.
Each sound is built from several layers of different lengths, for example 30, 37 and 47 seconds for the fireplace. The layers almost never line up the same way twice, so the overall pattern takes a very long time to repeat. A new random seed is used whenever a sound is built, so your rain is not the same recording that everyone else hears. Natural drift, on by default, lets each sound’s volume rise and fall slowly, the way a real room or forest changes from minute to minute.
White, pink or brown noise: which one should you use?
The three noise colours differ in how their energy is spread across frequencies. White noise has the same power at every frequency and sounds bright. Pink noise drops off towards the highs and sounds more natural. Brown noise drops off even faster, leaving a deep rumble. If you are masking speech in an open office, start with white or pink noise. For long sessions or sleep, many people find brown noise easier on the ears. Every noise has a tone slider, so you can take the edge off white noise or add a little brightness to brown.
What does the research say? A 2024 meta-analysis of 13 studies (Nigg and colleagues, Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry) found that white and pink noise gave a small but real boost on attention tasks for young people with ADHD or strong ADHD symptoms. People without ADHD, however, did slightly worse with noise. None of the studies looked at brown noise, which is popular online but simply hasn’t been tested yet. In practice, noise suits some people and distracts others, so try it at a low volume and trust your own experience.
Binaural beats and isochronic tones
A binaural beat happens inside your head. If your left ear hears 195 Hz and your right ear 205 Hz, your brain perceives a 10 Hz pulse that neither ear actually receives. That is why binaural beats only work with headphones. An isochronic tone is a single tone that switches on and off at the beat rate, so it works on speakers too. Choose the beat with the slider (1–40 Hz) or the band buttons, and pick a carrier tone of 150 to 400 Hz. Binaural beats are clearest with carriers below about 1,000 Hz.
| Band | Button in the tool | Commonly linked with |
|---|---|---|
| Delta (about 1–4 Hz) | Delta 2 Hz | Deep rest and sleep |
| Theta (about 4–8 Hz) | Theta 6 Hz | Drowsiness, drifting, creative wandering |
| Alpha (about 8–12 Hz) | Alpha 10 Hz | Relaxed, calm attention |
| Beta (about 13–30 Hz) | Beta 16 Hz | Alert, active thinking |
| Gamma (above 30 Hz) | Gamma 40 Hz | Intense focus. At this rate an isochronic tone is easier to hear than a binaural beat. |
Be realistic about the effect. A 2023 systematic review in PLOS ONE looked at 14 EEG studies of binaural beats. Five supported the idea that the brain falls into step with the beat, eight did not, and one was mixed. Use the tones as a pleasant focus cue, not a treatment. Keep them quiet, under other sounds, and skip rhythmic tones if you have epilepsy or a seizure disorder.
Built-in focus timer: Pomodoro, deep work or your own rhythm
| Mode | Focus | Short break | Long break |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pomodoro 25 / 5 | 25 min | 5 min | 15 min |
| Deep work 50 / 10 | 50 min | 10 min | 20 min |
| Long focus 90 / 20 | 90 min | 20 min | 30 min |
| Custom | 1–240 min | 1–120 min | 1–120 min |
With Long break after every 4 sessions on, every fourth break is the long one. You can also have the next phase start automatically, pause the sounds during breaks, play a soft chime when a phase ends, or get a desktop notification. Skip jumps to the next phase, and Reset takes you back to the start of a fresh focus session. The timer goes by the clock rather than counting ticks, so it stays accurate even when the tab is in the background. If you reload the page, a running timer carries on where it was.
Sleep timer and gentle fade-out
Choose Stop sounds after 15 minutes up to 3 hours. The sound doesn’t cut off abruptly: it fades out over the last minute and a half and then stops. Combine it with brown noise, rain or the fan for a simple white-noise machine on your phone or laptop.
Ready-made mixes
| Mix | Sounds |
|---|---|
| 🧠 Deep work | Brown noise + light rain |
| 📚 Study | Pink noise + gentle stream |
| 🌧️ Rainy cabin | Steady rain + fireplace + distant thunder |
| 🌊 Seaside | Rolling waves + breeze |
| 🌲 Forest morning | Morning bird chorus + gentle stream + breeze |
| 💻 Coding | Brown noise + low fan |
| ⛈️ Thunderstorm | Heavy rain + distant thunder + gusty wind |
| 🏕️ Campfire night | Campfire + night crickets + breeze |
| 🌙 Summer night | Night crickets + breeze + a little brown noise |
| ✈️ Night flight | Airplane cabin |
| 🎧 Alpha calm | Light rain + binaural beats at 10 Hz |
| 🎧 Gamma 40 Hz | Pink noise + isochronic tones at 40 Hz |
Every mix is just a starting point. Change any volume, tone or variation, then save it as your own.
Save mixes, share them and track your focus time
- My mixes keeps up to 30 of your own combinations, including each sound’s volume, tone and variation and the beat settings.
- Share mix copies a link with the whole mix inside it. Whoever opens it can play it or save it to their own mixes. The settings travel in the link itself, so nothing is uploaded.
- All sounds off clears the mixer in one tap, and Undo brings it back.
- Focus stats shows your minutes today, minutes over the last 7 days, focus sessions finished today and your day streak, with a small chart of the week. Minutes count while sounds are playing. A session is a focus phase of the timer that you finished. The streak counts the days in a row on which you either listened for at least a minute or finished a session.
Tips for better focus with background sound
- Keep it quiet. The sound should only just cover the noise around you. If you notice the sound itself, turn it down.
- Layer instead of turning up. A low noise under a textured sound, such as brown noise under rain, masks more than one loud sound.
- Use the same mix for the same kind of work. After a few days, pressing play becomes a cue to start.
- Decide on one task before you press play, and let the timer tell you when to stop.
- Take real breaks. Stand up, look out of the window or get some water. Turn on Pause sounds during breaks to make the break obvious.
- Use headphones only for binaural beats. Every other sound works fine on speakers.
Planning your week as well? Our Chore Chart Maker splits household jobs fairly, and the Grocery List Maker turns meal plans into a sorted shopping list.
Privacy, offline use and browser support
Everything runs on your device with the Web Audio API. No audio is streamed or downloaded, and nothing you do is sent anywhere. Your settings, saved mixes and stats are kept only in this browser’s local storage. Clearing your browser data, or using a private window, removes them. Data & privacy → Erase all data deletes them straight away, and Undo is there if you change your mind. Once the page has loaded, the sounds are generated on your device, so they keep playing even if your connection drops. Focus Sounds works in current versions of Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari and Opera on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS. If you hear nothing on an iPhone, check the side switch and the volume, then press Play again.