lowhum 0.4.1

Deep Brown Noise for Focus as a MenuBar App & CLI Tool

LowHum

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.

Install

uv (requires Python 3.12+):

uv tool install lowhum

Usage

lowhum                          # launch the menu-bar app (runs in background)
lowhum devices                  # list output devices
lowhum generate                 # pre-generate the audio file

lhm is a shorthand alias for all commands.

Menu bar controls

• Play / Stop from the menu bar
• Pick any connected audio device from the Output Device submenu
• Binaural beats overlay (Theta, Alpha, Beta, Gamma)
• Noise color selection (brown, pink, white)
• Auto-stops when headphones connect or disconnect

How it works

On first launch, a 10-minute WAV is synthesized locally for every noise color and binaural combination. 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.

The menu bar icon is a template image, so macOS handles dark/light mode automatically.