Guide · Sleep and soothing
Is white noise safe for babies?
Covers volume, distance and duration, with the study behind the numbers.
2:14 AM · Adaptive Soothing
White noise that responds to your baby
Most white noise apps do one thing when they hear crying: they start playing a recording. Growbaby does something different. It shapes the sound while your baby settles, changes it as they do, and fades it out once they have.
The difference
Triggering a sound and responding to one are not the same thing
A cry detector is a switch. It listens for crying, starts a track you chose earlier, and stops after a set time. The sound is the same at the first second and the last, whether your baby is working up to a full cry or already drifting off.
Growbaby treats it as a response rather than a switch. The soundscape is built in four layers and shaped in real time: it builds while your baby is unsettled, softens as they settle, and fades out when they are asleep. Nobody taps anything, and there is no timer to guess at.
If you are choosing between apps, we set the ones that start a sound on a cry side by side, with what each does next, what it costs and where Growbaby is the worse pick, in white noise apps with cry detection, compared.
On your phone
It runs on your phone. Audio is never uploaded.
Cry detection happens on the device, with on-device machine learning. Audio is never uploaded, and nothing is recorded and sent away to be processed. A microphone listening in a nursery is a serious thing to hand to a company, and the answer to that is not a promise about how the recordings are handled but not having recordings at all.
- On-device
- No audio uploaded
- Fades out
- Detection
- On the device, with on-device machine learning.
- Audio
- Never uploaded.
- Recordings
- None. Nothing is recorded and sent away to be processed.
- At 2 AM
- Fades out on its own. No screen taps.
Calm mode, in the app.
Limits
What it is not. It responds to sound.
It is also not the first app to listen for crying. Several do. What is different is what happens after it hears, which is the part described above.
It is
- The soundscape is built in four layers and shaped in real time: it builds while your baby is unsettled, softens as they settle, and fades out when they are asleep.
- Cry detection happens on the device, with on-device machine learning.
- Nobody taps anything, and there is no timer to guess at.
It is not
- It is not a baby monitor and it is not a substitute for one.
- It responds to sound; it does not tell you why your baby is crying, and it makes no clinical judgement of any kind.
- Growbaby is not a medical device and does not perform triage, symptom checking or assessment.
It handles 2 AM, so you can sleep too
Adaptive soothing comes with the rest of Growbaby: an assistant that remembers your child, sleep routines for their exact age, and one thing to notice and one thing to try for every week of the first three years.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Cry detection starts a track. This shapes one. Most apps play a fixed recording when they hear crying and stop it on a timer; Growbaby builds the sound while your baby settles, changing it as they do, and fades it out once they have.
No, and it does not try to. It responds to sound, not to a reason. Growbaby is not a medical device and does not perform triage, symptom checking or any clinical assessment.
No. Cry detection runs on the device with on-device machine learning, and audio is never uploaded. Nothing is recorded and sent anywhere for processing.
It is, at the right volume and distance, and those two things matter more than the sound itself. Our guide covers what the 2014 Pediatrics study on infant sleep machines actually found and what to do about it.
No. That is the point of it fading out on its own. The sound starts when it is needed and ends when it is not, without a screen in a dark room.
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