Best tinnitus masking apps in 2026: what to look for
A sound app can do one honest thing here: play steady masking sounds, which many people with tinnitus use to make the ringing less noticeable. No app on this page treats tinnitus. Sound apps are players, and the controlled evidence does not show that sound therapy beats a placebo. What an app can honestly offer is mechanics: a fine volume control at the quiet end, a timer, a way to layer sounds and a spectrum you can shape. Those are the things we judged.
Read this before the list
Ringing in one ear only, ringing that pulses along with your heartbeat, or a sudden change in hearing needs an assessment rather than a download. The US National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders advises starting with a primary care doctor, who can check for earwax or an infection blocking the ear canal. Where you are choosing what to do about tinnitus, cognitive behavioural therapy carries stronger clinical support than sound does, and an audiologist can point you at it. Slo does not diagnose or treat anything.
A note on prices. Every app here changes its pricing, and several sell a one-time purchase whose amount differs by storefront. We checked the listings on 2 August 2026 and describe the model rather than a number, because a number goes stale within weeks. Check your own store page before you buy.
myNoise, for spectrum control
myNoise beats Slo at one specific thing, and it is the thing that matters most to a masking use case: per-frequency sliders. Its soundscapes hand you a bank of level controls across the spectrum, so you can lift the region where your ringing sits and drop the rest by ear. Slo has no equivalent. Slo’s mixer balances whole sounds against each other, which is a coarser tool.
The listing on 2 August 2026 shows a free download with a one-time in-app purchase and no subscription. Stéphane Pigeon records and calibrates the soundscapes himself, and the app carries several hundred.
Downsides: the interface asks more of you, and a bank of sliders is exactly the sort of thing an anxious listener will fiddle with at 3am when the point is to stop fiddling.
Slo, the browser-first option
Slo runs in a browser tab with no install, which makes it the cheapest way to find out whether a masking sound suits you at all. Each sound has its own player with volume and a timer, and the mixer layers sounds with independent levels. The apps for iOS, Android and Mac exist for people who want it on a phone.
What Slo does not have: per-frequency shaping, tinnitus frequency matching, or any claim that it does something to your hearing. Not every sound in the library is free, so check what your plan covers rather than taking a marketing number at face value.
Try white noise, brown noise or rain in the browser first.
Dark Noise, if you live on Apple devices
Dark Noise is an Apple-only player with 50+ sounds, custom mixes, a fade-out timer and deep Shortcuts, Siri and widget support. That automation matters more than it sounds: a bedside routine you trigger with a voice command or a Control Centre toggle is a routine you do not open an app to start. The listing on 2 August 2026 shows a free download with a small free sound set, and a Pro tier sold either as a subscription or as a one-time lifetime purchase. No Android version exists.
White Noise, the one-time purchase option
White Noise by TMSOFT runs on iPhone, Android, Mac and Windows, layers sounds on a mix pad, and includes an alarm plus a library of user-uploaded recordings. The developer states plainly on its own site, checked 2 August 2026, that there is no subscription: a free Lite version carries ads, and a single payment removes them and adds more. For an all-night habit on a device you keep for years, paying once is the cheaper shape.
How we judged them
| What we looked at | Why it matters for masking |
|---|---|
| quiet-end volume control | the level you want sits near the bottom of the slider |
| timer | a masking sound needs a stopping point you choose |
| layering | two quiet sounds can sit lower than one loud one |
| spectrum shaping | lets you avoid pushing energy where you do not need it |
| pricing model | a nightly habit outlives most subscriptions |
We did not score sound quality, because that is a preference, and we did not rank the apps by ratings, because store ratings measure an app rather than anything about tinnitus.
Questions people ask
Which app is best for tinnitus?
None of them is best for tinnitus, because none of them acts on tinnitus. myNoise gives you the most control over the spectrum. Slo is the quickest to try. Choose on mechanics and comfort.
Do any of these apps do notched or frequency-matched therapy?
Slo does not. Do not treat any consumer app as the clinical intervention a guideline describes, and take a frequency-matching question to an audiologist.
Does paying more get you a better masking sound?
No evidence says so. Price buys you a library and an interface, nothing else.
Read next
- Sound masking for tinnitus sets out what masking is and what the research stops short of.
Sources
- App Store listing for myNoise, checked 2 August 2026: myNoise on the App Store
- Pricing model stated by the myNoise developer, checked 2 August 2026: myNoise blog
- App Store listing for Dark Noise, checked 2 August 2026: Dark Noise on the App Store
- Pricing model stated by the White Noise developer, checked 2 August 2026: tmsoft.com white noise page
- Cochrane review of sound therapy for tinnitus, Sereda and colleagues 2018: CD013094
- Tinnitus page at the US National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders
Explore more sounds in Slo
Stack two or three sounds, keep the blend, and let the timer stop it. Slo, on iOS, Android and Mac.
