| Cult of Mac

Turn on gentle rain and ocean sounds while you work

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Relaxing Rain Sounds For Work
Chill out and silence the sounds of your environment with the sounds of rain, the ocean and more.
Image: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac/W.carter/Wikimedia Commons

Working in an office or in the city, you’re probably inundated with noise from people chattering, cars running and nearby music. Your iPhone has a built-in feature called Background Sounds for playing rain noises or white noise to tune it all out.

You don’t need to download any apps or pay a cent; it comes for free on your Mac and iPhone. Let me show you how it works.

Leaked HomePod sounds are absolutely delightful

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Apple's new HomePod smart speaker is ready to rock your house.
HomePod will launch in December, but supplies will be constrained.
Photo: Apple

Apple’s latest firmware for the unreleased HomePod revealed a new set of sounds that the smart speaker will use to indicate various user interactions.

The new tones for the Siri-powered speaker sound different from the ones leaked in a previous firmware build. They also serve different purposes. While the sounds are simple, they are quite lovely — and worthy of a $350 speaker.

Take a listen:

How to kill Facebook’s annoying app sounds on your iPhone

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Tired of the new bleeps already? Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac

You may have noticed recently that the Facebook app makes sounds. Like a post? Chirp. Refresh the news feed? Swoosh. It’s like your iPhone got suddenly chatty and wants you to know that you’re tapping on the screen with every blip and bloop.

Surely you’d like to turn these things off. You could just mute your whole iPhone with the sound toggle button, but if you want to have other audio come through, like video, music, or (gasp) phone calls, you can dip into your Facebook app settings and soon experience the bliss of a blip-free Facebook browsing experience.

Here’s how.

The Mac Startup Chime Is Now Trademarked

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The distinctive startup chime that greets every Mac owner when they start up their machine in the morning? That sound of a synthesizer playing a “slightly flat, by about thirty cents, G flat/F sharp chord” that tells you everything’s all okay and right with your Mac? Apple now owns a registered trademark for that sound. Hoorah!

Source: Patently Apple

Get All The Vintage Mac System Sounds On OS X With This Quick Tip

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The new system sounds for OS X just aren’t as cool and quirky as they once were back in 80s. Remember the duck quack, and the monkey screech, and — oh yeah — that moo-ing sound? Genius!

Apple got rid of all those gems in OS X, but there’s actually a way to bring them back to your Mac if you’re feeling nostalgic. Gizmodo’s Jesus Diaz breaks it down real quick and easy on how to get the vintage Mac sounds on your new Mac.

Here’s how to do it: