Wake tones
The tone matters less than whether the alarm can reach you
Most alarm apps play audio in the background and hope nothing stops them. Tock is built on AlarmKit, Apple's own alarm framework, so the ring arrives as a system alarm on the native full-screen alert. That is the part that decides whether you wake up. The tone only decides how you feel about it.
Tock ships 18 wake tones and will use your own audio instead if you prefer. Because the alarm runs on Apple AlarmKit it rings on silent, through a Focus, and with the app closed. It then keeps ringing until you complete one of nine wake-up missions.
- Wake tones
- 18Wake tonesOr your own audio file
- Wake-up missions
- 9Wake-up missionsMind, body and place
- Smart wake window
- 30 minSmart wake windowSet time is always the fallback
Why a Tock alarm behaves differently from an app playing a sound
An ordinary app has no right to make noise at six in the morning. It has to keep an audio session alive all night and hope iOS never reclaims it, which is why alarm apps have a reputation for occasionally failing on the one morning it mattered.
AlarmKit changed that. Tock registers a real system alarm, so the ring comes from iOS rather than from an app that had to stay awake. It arrives on the native full-screen alert, on silent, inside a Focus, with the app closed. The mechanism pagegoes through it properly, and the missions page covers what happens after the sound starts.
Four you can hear right now
Real clips from the app. Turn the volume up a little, because laptop speakers flatter a wake tone.
- BeaconBeacon is a wake tone in Tock: an evenly spaced two-note pulse that your ear identifies as an alarm almost immediately. Tock's alarms are built on Apple's AlarmKit, so Beacon rings on the native full-screen alert even when the phone is on silent, sitting in a Focus, or the app hasn't been opened since last night.Play it here
- KalimbaKalimba is Tock's thumb-piano wake tone: warm plucked notes with a short woody decay that lift you rather than startle you. It still runs on Apple's AlarmKit, so a silent switch, an active Focus and a closed app make no difference to whether it goes off.Play it here
- MarimbaMarimba is the rounded wooden-bar tone everybody recognises from stock phone alarms, and Tock ships its own version of it. Familiarity cuts both ways: your brain identifies it instantly, and it has also had years of practice sleeping through it. The alarm itself still rings on Apple's AlarmKit, so silent mode and a Focus change nothing.Play it here
- Music boxMusic box is Tock's slowest and most nostalgic wake tone, a thin bell-like melody that unwinds instead of alerting. It rings reliably through silent mode because Tock's alarms run on Apple's AlarmKit, but as a tone it is the weakest choice in the set for anyone who genuinely sleeps hard.Play it here
Questions about the kind of alarm, not the tone
Gentle or loud, nature or noise, and whether a sunrise alarm is worth buying hardware for.
- Gentle alarm soundsA gentle alarm works when it catches you at a light moment and fails when it lands in the heaviest part of your night, which is a timing problem rather than a volume one. Tock watches movement and sound across the 30 minutes before your alarm and rings early at a lighter moment if it finds one, with your set time as the fallback.
- Loud alarm soundsTock's alarms ring through silent mode and through a Focus because they are built on Apple's AlarmKit, not on an app keeping audio alive in the background. What no app can do is raise your iPhone's hardware volume for you. Loudness gets your eyes open; the wake-up mission is what stops you dismissing it and going straight back to sleep.
- Nature alarm soundsBirds, water and weather make calm wake tones and carry one specific failure: a natural sound is easy for a sleeping brain to fold into a dream rather than treat as an alarm. Tock counters that in two places, by scheduling the alarm through Apple's AlarmKit so it lands on the system full-screen alert, and by keeping it ringing until a wake-up mission is done.
- Sunrise alarmA sunrise alarm clock is a bedside lamp that brightens over roughly 20 to 30 minutes before your set time, and the light is the part you are paying for. Tock is an iPhone app with no light hardware at all, so it takes the timing half instead: a soft wake tone rung at a lighter moment inside the last 30 minutes rather than at a fixed time.
- Custom alarm soundTock comes with 18 wake tones, and if none of them suit you it takes your own audio as the alarm instead. Whatever you choose still gets scheduled through Apple's AlarmKit, so the silent switch, an active Focus and a fully closed app have no bearing on whether it rings.
- Annoying alarm soundsAn unbearable alarm tone works for roughly a week. After that you learn to silence it before you are properly conscious, and you are back where you started with a worse mood attached. The durable fix is not a harsher sound, it is making the alarm end somewhere your half-asleep self cannot reach.
Questions people ask
Will an alarm app ring when my iPhone is on silent?
It will if the alarm is a system alarm. Tock is built on Apple AlarmKit, which is the same framework behind the behaviour you expect from the built-in Clock app, so it rings on silent, through a Focus and with the app closed. An app that plays its own audio in the background does not have that guarantee.
What is the best alarm sound to wake up to?
The one you have not yet learned to sleep through. Familiarity is what kills an alarm tone, which is why the stock sound on your phone stops working after a few months. Changing tone every so often does more than picking the perfect one.
Can I use my own song as an alarm in Tock?
Yes. You can set your own audio as the wake tone instead of one of the 18 that ship with the app. The page on custom alarm sounds goes through what works and what to avoid.
Does a louder alarm work better?
Only up to a point, and past that it mostly makes you resent the morning. What reliably gets people out of bed is a task standing between them and the off button, which is what Tock does with nine wake-up missions across mind, body and place.
Elsewhere on the site
Different corner of the same problem.
- Tock for youNew parentsYou do not wake up to an alarm any more, you wake up to a small person, three or four times, and then you have to be a functioning adult by seven. The night is not so much short as it is in pieces.
- AlternativesTock vs RiseChoose Rise if planning your day around energy peaks and a running sleep debt is what actually changes your behaviour. Choose Tock if you want the alarm itself to be smarter, the night recorded from the phone, and a coach that can talk about what it heard.
- RoundupsThe best sleep apps for iPhone, sorted by what you're fixingFor iPhone, the best sleep app depends on the problem. Tock is the best all-round pick when the alarm and the morning are what is broken, Apple Health Sleep is the free place to start, Calm is for people who cannot fall asleep, AutoSleep is for Apple Watch owners, Rise is for sleep debt and SnoreLab is for snoring.
- Wake timesWaking up at 6:30amBedtimes by sleep cycle for a 6:30am alarm.
- Head to headSleepScore vs SnoreLabIf snoring is the complaint and you want to find out whether the mouthguard made a difference, SnoreLab. If you want the whole night measured without wearing anything, SleepScore.
- FeaturesSleep scoreThe sleep score is a single number for a night, sitting at the top of that night detail view. Underneath it are the parts that produced it, and across nights the insights cover 21 metrics in 7 groups plus long-run measures like sleep regularity and sleep debt.
In the morning, you get to hear what woke you
Tock rings on silent, waits for a lighter moment where it can, and keeps going until you solve something. Eighteen tones, or bring your own.