Last updated on December 16th, 2025 at 11:34 pm
Pocket Bard – Entertainment Game Review
Pocket Bard is a Entertainment game from Pocket Bard Inc., first launched in 14th February 2023.
It’s rated 9+ and currently has 425+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Pocket Bard Stand Out
Pocket Bard is a fully immersive audio experience for your tabletop RPG game session. With just a tap, change your entire soundscape to match the tone of your session – from moment to moment, alter the intensity of the music and sound effects to pair perfectly with your gameplay.
Terms of Service: https://www.pocketbard.app/terms-of-service.html
Privacy Policy: https://www.pocketbard.app/privacy-policy.html
This Entertainment game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Pocket Bard is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 8th December 2025
Recent improvements include:
- Improve app architecture and performance
- Fix several bugs
Download & Availability
Pocket Bard is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
As a DM, our parties enjoyment is a huge part of our own enjoyment. This was an amazing alternative to having 15 chrome tabs open and having to fight through ads just to get good background music. Loved the ad free, infinite loops! Really took our RPG to the next level.
To get to our Library of downloaded scenes we had to force stop the app and relaunch it. Bad UI experience.
It makes zero sense to have an app that downloads themes a subscription system. ALL these apps that try to tie you into subscriptions are gross. Also, the app drains battery life so quickly.
Pocket Bard is amazing. It can add atmosphere and flavor to adds to any session, with amazing custom-ability! We love using it for moments of tension, battles or just changing scenes between characters. And the lately updates!!! chefs kiss.
Pocket Bard pulls you right into the story. The music feels so alive and fits every mood perfectly, whether its calm, tense, or emotional, it just wraps you in the scene. Its crazy how much atmosphere it adds! It makes every session feel like youre actually there. You can tell a lot of care went into how each track flows. Easily one of the most immersive apps Ive ever used.
This is exactly what any Game Master needs to theatrically enhance immersion and overall gameplay for your players. 100% recommend.
This has been such a fun tool to add to our table. The endless songs and sounds are super applicable and can be toned up or down in an instant. Our players loved this piece of immersion.
Theres a nice variety of ambiences and music with many free options. The ability to fine tune the atmosphere of the environmental sounds and adjust the music from exploration to combat is smooth and intuitive. The whole app is well thought out. We hope to see more one shot sound effects for monsters and combat. The app will also continue to play when listening to an audio book on Audible which is a really cool bonus (if only you could adjust the volume independently) making the experience much more engaging.
Ive been looking for a good way to set up ambiance for our DnD games for a while. After we found this, our search was over! Ive used it for years and our players and we have enjoyed it thoroughly. Thank you for making this wonderful app.
We recently discovered this app and think its a wonderful addition to TT gaming; however, it completely drains our battery even while not using. It said 18 hours of background use yesterday even though we never opened it. We noticed others pointing out the same issue, and it appears that version 3 has not yet addressed this issue. Hoping it gets solved because Id love to use this app but for now Ive had to remove from our phone so that we dont run out of charge halfway through the day.
The app is designed well and the free options are awesome. But the subscription for the other options is pretty high. Yeah there are a lot of extra options, but for a typical game you might use 1, maybe 2 of them. Example: how often are you really going to be using the Sci-Fi kit and the Seafaring kit in the same game? Probably not very. It would be nice to be able to either subscribe at lower tiers to select only the options we want to use, or purchase packs individually. We really only want the Seafaring pack, maybe the horror, as we have absolutely no use for sci-fi, cyberpunk, or feywild. We think we could justify $4-5/month or $36-ish/year but $7/month or $50/year seems high to us. Just our 2.
We're looking for a simple soundboard type app which will allow us to play "effect" sounds in certain situations. Examples of this, from the Pocket Bard 3.0 video on YouTube, include different weapons firing, clashing of metal, and alarm bells ringing. We tried setting this up in Pocket Bard but could not find a simple mechanism to download and easily play these effect sounds. We think Pocket Bard may work well for background ambience, but it is not convenient for a simple soundboard.
This app concept is really awesome, and we were very much looking forward to using this to augment our D&D sessions. But, we found the app was consuming significant battery power even while not being used: it showed ad being our third most used app for the week despite us only trying it out for 20 minutes. We have deleted this app as a precaution, but we would download it again with the future update if the energy drain can be ameliorated.
Simple and easy to use perfect in every way. Music is tied deeply to a story and this is going to be in every game night from now on.
Our game group uses this app all the time when were playing our TTRPGs and theres always a scene to make the encounter better! When we had an issue with our app not being able to download new content we emailed their support staff and they had the issue resolved within the hour.
Been using this for awhile and it works great! We dont quite understand the critical reviews as the free version of the app is incredibly generous! Though we dont use this app as much as we have previously (Ive found music to fit the setting) all the features are great, and make the tabletop a more immersive experience.
We adore this, loved it the instant we tried it out. But Ive ran into an issue where we cant download certain free settings, they say download error: unexpected error while downloading (insert soundscape file name) and we just cant download them. Which is a bummer. However, everything else about this app is just the best, we love the ability to add in sounds easily as a scene progresses, adjust its intensity, and that all the sounds FADE in and out, they dont just cut out! We love that.
We used this in a 6 hour session today and it was super helpful and easy to use. We ended up letting one of our players run it while we DMd and it added so much to the atmosphere. Our only issue was balancing the volume level for intensity, weather, and ambience. The weather effects always felt a bit too overpowering and louder than we wanted.
This was the first D&D app we were recommended for music and ambiance. Its also the one we keep coming back to and using the most. Simple to start using but lots of variety. Also, very reasonable pricing for what all you get with the app. The free tier offers a lot too which is nice to see. Highly recommend for any game master to try.
We were surprised by how good this app is! We thought it wouldnt be much different than using Spotify to find a playlist for each occasion, but its so amazing how in this app you can overlay tracks seamlessly and change their intensity. The transitions are so smooth.
Would be better if there was a free trial to try some of the features that are locked behind the subscription.
We paid for premium. We refuse to use this app. The sounds are cool we wont lie! But theyre repeating. Nearly every download is the same. Very small amount of new noises or ambiance. Its not worth it at all. :/ our hopes were too high.
Ive tried several apps for background music and ambient noice. This one is perfect. Just enough to set the mood for a dnd scene, but not so obnoxious or repetitive that you cant leave it running for a few hours while you play. Im considering using it for sleep noise. Excellent app.
Usually free stuff for things like this isnt that good but this is amazing. Im not subscribed yet but we want to. If the free stuff is this good we cant imagine what the rest is like. Amazing DM companion.
We have scoured this planets app stores and websites to find something to play music in the background of even decent quality. Luckily we randomly got advertised this and its changed everything since. DM approved.
This app is all-around incredible. The sounds, the flow, the one-shotseverything just works together well. Even more, the developers seem to really love what theyre doing and want to give back to the people using their app. The only improvement we would ask for is a way to turn affect individual volumes of elements (we.e. Change the volume of the crowd and campfire within the ambiance section). We dont think it would be too difficult of an add, and it would make a huge difference in the app. That said, keep doing what you guys are doing. Great work.
This is one of the best soundboards we have seen and we would love to support it however it is just a sound board after all and the cost is far too high and oddly a subscription. Not worth it in the slightest. Id be willing to do $1.99/m but $6.99 is absurd. We honestly think a flat $20 for life is better. There is simply not enough value to paying what they are asking and part of the joy of using this is the simplicity. In the end o love the app but hate the build in scarcity to make you pay. Is a gross strategy.
Great for setting many moods. We use this for reading and playing games. Sometimes the effects like explosions and others dont work but for the most part its so lovely. We cant be mad at it when it sounds so stunning as a whole.
Fun concept, customizable, however, premium is very frustrating. You have to make an account just to even see the price, and the price in question is like a Netflix amount of payment, just for a soundscape we could find roughly the same on YouTube.
Great attention to detail! Even the ability to add stuff like a splash of water or a wolf howl.
The composition of the music is amazing. This app also gives you for free 10x what other apps charge for. That alone is worth a download. The one shot sfx bring a lot of depth as well, but the absence of any creature growls or roars seem to be a glaring omission. We haven't used it enough to say that there aren't any at all, but we looked at everything that was free. It's it possible to add our own sfx to the one shots? If so, we would only ever use this one app and never look back. Oh one other thing: the victory button is great! But… What if they don't win? Lol.
Recently downloaded Pocket Bard and played around with the free version for an hour or two and it is FANTASTIC. Its so versatile and even with just the free content (theres a ton), its a super varied range of settings and background/environmental sounds. Transitioning between the intensity of the music and exploration/combat flavors is really easy. It also comes with a mode to allow for easier conversation over the music without lowering the volume. Also looked over their website and the music is royalty-free and they plan on continuing to expand the content and evolve the app continuously, including both free and paid subscription content. A lot of love and consideration went into this and Ive honestly never been so excited over a TTRPG tool.
We were told to get this app as a dm. We used to spend a lot of time finding various video game themes to play at our table, for each and every building, environment, et cetera. This removes the vast majority of that work, and gives us so many options to choose from for anything that may pop up. If you play dnd, or if you run any roleplaying game, get this app. The interactivity and versatility is awesome.
We saw the add cross our FYP on TikTok and decided to give it a try and instantly fell in love. The app is simple and easy to use, and the customization options are AMAZING! Its a bit limited at the moment for free users, but we recognize the app is still new and in the future hope to see more in the future as the app grows bigger. We definitely recommend it for more than just role playing, we personally use it for studying ambience, and for inspiration for writing. Love the app and cannot wait to see where it goes.
Just like title says. We cant believe all of the incredible work put into this app. The iPhone app is great, but getting the full experience on our MacBook has been fantastic. No hiccups or issues, the Dev Team has been adding more content on a frequent basis. The free content alone deserves the 5 stars, and the premium content makes the whole experience that much better. Thank you and keep up the good work.
We love this app so let us get that out of the way. We think the idea behind it is amazing. However it has some bugs. For one the explosion one shot doesnt work on any of the scenes for us except the original scene it comes with. We purchased the subscription so we have all the other ones. The other problem is we noticed a lot of scenes like the city and town have whisper for ambiance. Bit whisper sounds like demonic whispering. It doesnt fit. However the tavern has the crowd sound. Which fits way better. We think the devs need to go through and replace the whispers with the crowd effect cause it makes way more sense. Unfortunately you can use the crowd effect in other scenes cause then it changes everything when you switch. Also maybe devs should come up with a way for us to create our own scenes with the sounds already available. That would be amazing and add a whole new option for customization. Cause we notice theres lots of scenes with one shot assets we like but the explore or location sounds dont fit.
Updated(9/17/24): wanted to update the review as this app is a great blend and even our DM thinks that it would be a fun tool to use. When we were showing the DM the app we found that the download started to work and downloaded the sound pack for the other free regions. Idk if the issue we were having was a localized one or not. We were trying it late at night and that might have been an issue as this was in the morning then we had tried again to download the new sounds. Old: Not sure what it is but this app isnt downloading any of the sound packs? We love the one that it comes with and we would love to use this and or recommend it to a DM friend for a campaign that we are going to start, but with the download issues idk If it wasnt for that we would. This is a unique tool for DMs to create atmosphere and really bring the players into the world that youre trying to build.
Started playing the base stuff and it was great. We went to download all the other free content and then app crashes and can never start, even after rebooting our phone.
We are a first time DM for our familys dnd session. Ive been wanting something like this for a very long time and Im glad we finally found it! It is an extremely cool help that will help make this campaign more real and exciting! Thank you.
We saw how cool the app was from a friend of ours so we got it. We went to open the app and a terms of service pops up. Cool whatever however when we click view terms. It opens the document then another terms of service pop up comes again. Click view terms the cycle starts again. Close the app fully still happens. Weird glitch.
We think they still have some work to do, but 5 stars because we want to see more.
Just got this app (using the free version) and its awesome! We highly recommend it. Only thing thats really noticeably missing is noises for weapons. Theres Impact in premium, but it could still use sounds like a bow and arrow, swords clanging or piercing, etc.
We will admit the free version is very generous but as others have mentioned the paid one is kinda pricey 7$ month for the full collection of sounds is kinda much we dont think this app will be as successful for user and developers if the price doesnt change and make a one time purchase option thats 35$ or monthly cost like 4$ we ALSO HATE MONTHLY SERVICES and yearly in a comparison cost about the same as dnd beyond master tier which is 55$ while pocket bard is 50$ its not a good business model even though they say it is we see other tabletops tools like tale spires add one time purchase options and succeed off of it.
We absolutely love this app! Now, we say this as someone who is only using the free assets (which the developers have been generous with), as we loath subscription services. If ot were a set amoutn for the whole shebang, then we would probably pay it. We just won't pay monthly. Minor rant out of the way, there are so many features that make the already generous free assets even better. The sliders don't affect volume, but the intensity and complexity of the sounds. Genius! We love the way each environment has a collection of background music, so each time you select it, it isn't exactly the same. This is simple to use, quick to use in game, and the quality and variety is spectacular.
The app is great, and makes setting a scene beautifully simple for the GM. We were a bit apprehensive on the subscription model, and decided to bite with the release of the tavern. However, the tavern setting was a huge let down. Every other scene, we can close our eyes, imagine where we are, and it fits perfectly. The tavern scene, instead of transporting us to a medieval fantasy tavern, takes us to an over priced artisan coffee shop.
Below youll find our original review, showing how much we loved this app. Maybe its just that Im broke and in between jobs right now, but the new subscription service is not ideal. Really disappointed in the newer updates. Im not paying $7 a month for this. This app will be deeply missed by us and our group. Ive been looking for something exactly like this ever since we started running TTRPG games with our friends. Its always been a hassle. What Im about to say is genuinely shocking, and not for the faint of heart: this app is exactly as advertised. Im floored by how good it is. Keeps playing as you pull up reference or character sheets on your phone, and perfect for board game night too! Im telling all our friends, whether they play TTRPGs or not, download it now.
We read adventure books to our young kids every night. This app has really added to the atmosphere when reading. Its truly amazing how well the music fits with the reading experience and how seamless the intensity can be adjusted. Its absolutely perfect and our kids love it. We let them control the sound effects when we hear crashes or explosions or weather events. It really makes everything about story time so much more fun. We would love to see more one-shot creature sounds and ambiance options to enhance environmental elements. Such as – dragon/dinosaur roars – night time animal ambiance sounds like crickets and owls hooting. – swampy bog gurgling and subtle frog noises – volcanic eruptions and earth rumbling Thanks again.
We love how smooth the transitions are from normal music to battle music. Cant wait to try this in our next playing session.
We literally just got the app, and we are in love. It has the smoothest transition between adventure, combat, and victory music. Some of the best white noise and sound effects Ive ever heard! We will be sure to use it whenever we play DnD with our family and friends. Again, love the app.
Using it right now for the first time while playing Arkham Horror board game. It has added so much depth and involvement from the squad. Youll be reading a card and have a drum swell land perfectly on a sentence and have everyone geekin. Superb product. using Haunted Swamp for Arkham, fits pretty well.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 3.0.21
- Size: 84.32 MB
- iOS: 16.1 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence, Infrequent/Mild Horror/Fear Themes
- Developer: Pocket Bard Inc.
Last updated: 8th December 2025 | Genre: Entertainment | Developer: Pocket Bard Inc.