Deep brown noise for focus, for macOS menu bar. Requires macOS and Python 3.12+. Website
Single-purpose menu bar app that generates deep brown noise locally and plays it on loop. Install it, click play, forget about it. Cumulative-sum brown noise through a Butterworth bandpass (1 to 500 Hz, 20 Hz sub-bass highpass), RMS-normalized per chunk, crossfaded at boundaries. Everything is stored in ~/.lowhum/. Playback streams through PortAudio via memory-mapped files, so the full WAV never sits in RAM. The app polls audio devices every 2 seconds and stops instantly if headphones disconnect or a Bluetooth device drops.
uv (requires Python 3.12+):
uv tool install lowhumlhm # launch the menu-bar app (runs in background)
lhm devices # list output devices
lhm generate # pre-generate the audio file(lhm being the shorthand alias, as the CLI tool)
The menu bar icon is a template image, so macOS handles dark/light mode automatically. Further, use it for:
- Play / Stop from the menu bar
- Pick any connected audio device from the Output Device submenu
- Noise color selection (brown, pink, white)
- Auto-stops when headphones connect or disconnect