I have tinnitus. If you also have tinnitus, you already know what that means: there is a sound in your head that does not exist, it never stops, and no one else can hear it. It is, in a word, maddening.

I tried the apps. Most of them offer a handful of tones, a white noise slider, and the quiet optimism of someone who has never actually had tinnitus. They helped a little, occasionally. What they did not offer was any real control over the shape of the sound — and tinnitus is not a single frequency. Mine is not, anyway, and everyone I have asked describes theirs differently. A lone tone at a fixed pitch is not going to cut it for something this complicated.

So I built what I wanted.

TinniTustler is a polytonal sound generator with controls for pitch, frequency, modulation, and tone layering, as well as the ability to adjust the signal’s noise component. The idea is that you can build a sound profile that actually matches what you hear, rather than approximating it based on whatever the developer assumed tinnitus sounds like. It is not a cure. It is not going to fix anything. But it can take the edge off, and sometimes that is enough.

I thought about making it donationware. Apple has a considered opinion about that, which they express by taking thirty percent of everything, so I went a different direction: the app is free and will stay that way. I am not going to put a price on something that might, even briefly, give someone a quieter hour.

TinniTustler will be available on the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store.

If you want to know more or join the beta, get in touch below.