About greensound
Real places, for sleep. greensound is a sound mixer that runs in your web browser. It layers real field recordings, each labeled with the place it was recorded, over soft noise made live on your device, and a timer fades it out when you choose. There is no app to install and no account to make.
What does greensound do?
Three ready-made mixes, Sleep, Focus and Relax, start with one tap. Below them, with Pro, you can build your own mix from up to six sounds, each with its own volume, and choose how long it plays: fifteen, thirty, sixty or ninety minutes, or all night. Green, brown, white and pink noise are generated in your browser as you listen, so they never repeat. The field recordings are loops cut from longer recordings of real places. Every sound without the Pro mark is free to play for fifteen minutes a day, with no account; without Pro, a ready-made mix plays its first sound, the real recording, alone. Pro, at $5.99 a month or $39.99 a year with seven days free the first time, adds the full mixes, up to six sounds layered, and timers from thirty minutes to all night.
What is a field recording?
A field recording is sound captured in a real place, outdoors, rather than made in a studio or on a computer. We did not make the recordings on greensound today. Other people made them, and each one is listed at the bottom of this page with who made it, where and when, as far as its source says. A sound that did not come from a place, such as a sound effect or a piece of music, is labeled as exactly that, with no place named, and is shown apart from the places.
How are the recordings chosen and credited?
We look for recordings whose source says who made them, where and when, and we listen to each one before it goes in. Some were left out after listening, because their sharpest sounds could not be softened without flattening them. Each recording that goes in is cut to a loop of twenty to forty seconds, its level is matched to the others, and its rare loudest moments are softened. We change nothing else. Where its maker had already edited a recording, or its license asks us to say what we changed, the list at the bottom of this page says so. When a source leaves out a name or a date, we leave it out too, rather than guess.
What do CC0 and CC BY mean?
Every recording on greensound today is shared under a Creative Commons license, and the list at the bottom of this page names the license of each one, with a link to its terms. CC0 is a public domain dedication: the person who made a recording waives their copyright as far as the law allows, so anyone may use it for anything without asking. It asks for no credit, and we give it anyway, because someone stood in that place with a microphone to make it. CC BY 4.0 lets anyone use a recording, even commercially, as long as they credit its maker, link to the license and say what was changed. For those recordings we print the credit exactly as its maker asked for it, the link to the license and a note of what was edited.
No ads, and nothing sold
greensound shows no ads and sells no data. There is no account and no tracking pixel, and nothing in the free mixer sets a cookie. If you start a Pro checkout, one cookie, which a restore link also sets, remembers it in this browser, and Stripe, which takes the payment, keeps your email; we never see your card, and greensound itself stores no email. If you ask for a link to turn Pro back on in another browser, Resend, the service that sends our email, delivers it to your address. Page visits are counted by Vercel, the company that hosts the site, without cookies. Listening sessions are counted in a table of our own: when a session starts and ends, how long it ran, and which sounds and length it used. A session's start may also record what kind of place the visit came from, as one of five words and never an address. Nothing in that table can tell us who you are, where you are or what device you used, and it is shared with no one; the only things we publish from it are the totals on the mixer page. So that sounds start faster next time, your browser keeps a copy of each free recording you play, on your device. That copy is only the sound itself: it holds nothing about you and is never sent anywhere, and clearing this site's data in your browser removes it. To keep free listening to fifteen minutes a day, your browser also keeps a small note on your device of how much of today's fifteen minutes it has used. The note holds only today's date and the times sound played, nothing about you; it is never sent to us, and clearing this site's data, or opening greensound in another browser, starts it again. The greensound extension for Chrome plays the same free sounds from the toolbar. It remembers your last sound and volume on your computer, keeps the free recordings it plays there too, and sends no listening counts.
How we count
The numbers under the heading on the mixer page come from the anonymous listening counts described above, and only from the live site. Plays on preview copies of the site are kept apart and never counted, and tests send nothing. The numbers refresh every few minutes.
Time listened adds up the whole minutes of every session that told us it ended, since we started counting on September 25, 2026. It includes noise as well as recordings. A session that never reports its end, because a phone ran out of battery or a tab was closed suddenly, adds nothing, so the real total is higher than the one shown. Below 1,000 hours it is shown in minutes, and from there in hours, always rounded down.
Listens counts sessions started in the last 24 hours. Pausing and playing again starts a new one.
Listening now is an estimate: sessions that started in the last hour, minus those that have told us they stopped. It can be too high when a session ends without telling us, and too low when someone has listened for more than an hour, so we round it down and only show it once it reaches 10.
A session's start may also record which kind of place the visit came from: a search engine, an AI assistant, a link on another site, a social site, or typed in or unknown. It is kept as one of five words, search, ai, link, social or direct, and never as an address. Your browser works the word out and sends only that, once each time a page loads. The address of the page you came from, and anything in it, is never part of a listening count. The word is worked out when a page first loads, so moving between greensound's pages usually keeps it, while a link that makes your browser load a whole new page shows as direct, because that page came from greensound itself. The word is a fact about one visit; it is not tied to the next one, or to you.
When a free listener's fifteen minutes for the day are used and they press Play, that is counted too: one row, at most once per page visit, saying only that it happened.
Anyone can stop their own device's listening from being counted by opening greensound.app/?count=off. That device then sends no listening counts at all, not even when a session starts or ends, and opening greensound.app/?count=on turns them back on. Page visits are still counted by Vercel, which hosts the site, without cookies. The choice is kept only in that browser, and is never sent to us.
Anyone could send us false counts. We limit how many we accept each hour and watch for floods. We never add to, multiply or round up these numbers.
Who makes greensound?
greensound is an independent project, made by one person, who also makes Lullable, an iPhone app of slow sleep stories, at getlullable.com.
Ten percent for real places
10% of what you pay us will go to conservation, starting with Ría Lagartos, a biosphere reserve on the north coast of Yucatán, and we will publish every transfer on a public page. greensound has only just begun charging, so nothing has been given yet.
Cancelling, changing phone and refunds
Pro renews until you cancel. You can cancel at any time with Manage Pro at the bottom of any page, which opens Stripe's own page; Pro stays on until the week or the period you have paid for ends. If you change phone or browser, open the Pro sheet, choose "Already paid? Restore" and enter the email you used, and we'll email you a link that turns Pro back on. For a refund, or anything that went wrong, write to us at info@stellartech.xyz.