‘It feels like fresh air to my ears’: can brown noise really help you concentrate?

Some people use it to improve their focus while others use it to drop off to sleep. The writer Zadie Smith says she listens to it day and night. But what is brown noise? And does it work?

There's a new buzz on TikTok - well, not a buzz exactly. It's more of a hum, maybe waves crashing, a purring fan or steady, heavy rain. To me, it sounds like an empty aeroplane, cruising peacefully at altitude. It's brown noise, a close cousin of the better-known white noise, and TikTok users, particularly the platform's ADHD community, are all over it: there are 85.3m views for the #brownnoise hashtag.

One top-rated video (1.3m views) shows user @NatalyaBubb trying brown noise. She looks initially startled, then spellbound. Where did all the thoughts go?" reads the caption over her wide-eyed face. Commenters on her and other brown-noise clips are mainly - though not exclusively - rapturous. I closed my eyes and literally thought of NOTHING ... it makes my brain feel soft in the best way possible"; This felt like fresh air to my ears"; Like a soft weighted blanket that I've safely swathed my brain in," says one writer with ADHD.