Help with Nighthum

What does the notch actually do?

Nighthum plays broadband masking sound and removes an octave-wide band of it, centred on the pitch you matched. Ordinary noise puts energy directly on top of your tinnitus; with the notch, the sound sits around your pitch instead of on it, so the two are less likely to compete for the same place.

That is all it does. It shapes what you hear from the speaker. It is not a treatment and it makes no change to your tinnitus itself.

Why does the pitch-finding step matter?

The notch has to be centred somewhere, and the pitch match is what tells the app where. Skip it and there is nothing to carve the sound around, which leaves you with plain broadband noise.

The match takes about a minute: headphones on, volume low, pick the nearest band, then drag the lit window along the skyline until the tone sits on your ringing. Two things are worth the extra thirty seconds — compare the octave above and below your answer, which is where most people go wrong, and redo the whole match on a different day if the first attempt felt like guesswork. The long version is here.

The masking sound isn't helping. What should I try?

Start with the volume, which is the usual culprit. Masking sound works better kept quiet — around or just under the level of your tinnitus rather than loud enough to bury it. Louder is never better, for your ears or for the effect.

Then redo the pitch match, checking the octave above and below. After that, try a different source or a blend; some people settle far better on rain or surf than on noise. If what you hear is a hiss or a rush rather than a tone, a notch centred on a single pitch may never feel right, and plain broadband sound can suit you better.

Give it more than one evening, too. And if none of it helps, that is worth knowing rather than worth pushing through — an audiologist can offer approaches an app cannot.

Does it work offline?

Yes. Everything runs on the device. The sound is generated on your iPhone rather than streamed, so aeroplane mode, hotel Wi-Fi that never connects, or no signal at all makes no difference to playback, to the pitch match or to the diary.

What data leaves my phone?

None. Nighthum has no networking code, no analytics, no advertising and no third-party SDKs. There are no accounts and there is no server to hold anything.

Your pitch match, your sounds and your diary entries are written to the app's own storage on your iPhone. Deleting the app deletes them; individual diary entries can be deleted from the Diary tab and the pitch match can be cleared from the More tab. In the App Store privacy label Nighthum declares Data Not Collected. The privacy policy has the detail.

How does the sleep timer behave?

Drag the moon along its arc to set the length, from fifteen minutes to all night. Nothing stops abruptly at the end — the sound fades down over the last stretch, which on the all-night session is the final ten minutes, so you are not jolted awake by silence.

Playback continues with the screen off, and the controls sit on your lock screen and in your AirPods.

How do I restore a purchase?

Open the More tab and tap Restore Purchases. Pro is tied to the Apple Account you bought it with, not to the device, so check you are signed in with that same account — a new phone or a different account is the usual reason it looks missing.

Nighthum only reads the entitlement Apple reports to it and has no login of its own. If a restore still does not bring Pro back, email us and mention the Apple Account address you purchased with.

How do I cancel a subscription?

Subscriptions are handled by Apple rather than by us, so we cannot cancel or refund one on your behalf, however much we would like to save you the step. On your iPhone: Settings, your name at the top, then Subscriptions, then Nighthum, then cancel.

Cancelling stops the renewal and Pro stays active until the end of the period you have already paid for. The lifetime purchase is a one-off and never renews, so there is nothing to cancel. Refund requests go to Apple at reportaproblem.apple.com.

Is Nighthum on the App Store yet?

Not yet. It is in development, and the waitlist is the way to hear when it lands. The home page has the sign-up, and the guides and blog are worth reading in the meantime whichever app you end up using.

Join the waitlist