Focus audio for ADHD brains

Music contains structure your brain automatically tracks: melody, rhythm, chord progressions, what comes next. You don't choose to follow it. For brains already working to stay on task, that tracking is one more thing competing for attention. It's why you end up humming mid-paragraph without noticing.

Ambient audio without melodic structure gives your brain something to register without something to follow. It settles the part of your attention that would otherwise drift to environmental noise, but there's no thread to chase. Underlay generates layered tonal textures and drones with that specific goal: present enough to help, stable enough to hold, nothing to hum or get pulled into.

ADHD doesn't show up the same way every day. Some days it's scattered attention that can't land anywhere. Other days it's anxiety, or no sleep, or being oddly wired and needing to channel it rather than calm down. A single "Focus" mode doesn't know which version of you showed up. Underlay asks before every session and adjusts the frequency range, texture density, and binaural beat target to match where you actually are.

No, and it's worth being honest about that. Brain.fm has published peer-reviewed research in Nature Communications Biology supporting their approach. Underlay is built on established principles — binaural beats, non-music auditory grounding, mood-state adaptation — but has no proprietary clinical studies. The case for Underlay isn't "we have more science." It's that the approach is structurally different: no music at all, and explicit mood input before every session. Whether that works better for you is something you can find out in a free session without a credit card.

No. Underlay is a focus audio app. It makes no clinical claims about ADHD diagnosis or treatment and is not a substitute for medical advice, therapy, or medication. If you have ADHD and are looking for clinical support, please work with a qualified healthcare provider. What Underlay offers is a different approach to focus audio — one that avoids the structural properties of music that many people with ADHD find counterproductive.

Brain.fm uses AI-generated functional music. Research-backed, but still musical. Endel adapts passively to time of day and biometrics, and has marketed itself to the ADHD audience without fully delivering. Underlay uses no music at all and asks how you're feeling before every session. For ADHD, that daily check-in matters in a way passive adaptation can't replicate.