Wake tones
Beacon alarm sound
Some alarms try to be music. Beacon doesn't, and that's the point. Pick it when you want no ambiguity about what the sound means and you still don't want to hate the first four seconds of your day.
In short
Beacon 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.
- Wake tones in Tock
- 18Wake tones in TockOr use your own audio
- Wake-up missions
- 9Wake-up missionsIt keeps ringing until you solve one
- How early smart wake can ring
- 30 minHow early smart wake can ringYour set time is the fallback
How it rings
Beacon opens with a soft front edge instead of a click, sits in the mid-high range where hearing is most sensitive, and gets more insistent through repetition rather than by climbing in volume, which buys you roughly fifteen seconds before it starts to grate.
Two notes are enough to mean alarm
Beacon repeats a short interval rather than a phrase. A phrase asks your brain to follow it, which is a pleasant thing to do half asleep and a terrible thing for an alarm. Two notes on a fixed beat give it nothing to follow, so the only available reading is that something wants you.
The tone also sits high enough to cut through a duvet and a pillow without needing the volume of a smoke detector. Most people find they can run Beacon a notch lower than whatever they were using before and still hear it from the far side of the bed.
The ring does not depend on the app staying awake
A normal alarm app has to hold an audio session open all night and hope iOS never reclaims it. Tock does not work that way. Alarms go through Apple's AlarmKit, so the system owns the schedule and puts up its own full-screen alert at the set time.
In practice that means silent mode makes no difference, a Focus makes no difference, and force quitting Tock before bed makes no difference. Beacon rings.
Volume is still yours. AlarmKit gets the alarm through silent mode, but no app can turn your ringer up for you.
Audible is a lower bar than hostile
People reach for the harshest tone they can find because they have been failed by a soft one. Almost always the soft tone failed on timing, not on volume, and the harsh replacement works for a week before you learn to kill it in your sleep.
Beacon is the middle setting on that dial. Clear enough that you cannot mistake it for a notification, mild enough that you will still be using it in three months.
Where the tone hands over to the mission
No tone keeps you out of bed. Beacon gets you conscious; a wake-up mission is what stops the swipe-and-sleep. Tock ships nine of them across mind, body and place, and the alarm keeps ringing until one is done.
If you have ever dismissed an alarm and had no memory of it, that is the part worth changing first.
Who should set this one
Worth setting if
- Sleepers who miss melodic tones but do not want to be blasted awake
- Shared bedrooms, because it carries across a room without going shrill
- A first alarm, where the job is to register rather than to soothe
- Anyone who has already worn out the stock tone on their phone
Pair it with a mission
MathWake-up mission
Beacon holds your attention without wrecking your mood, which matters when the thing standing between you and silence is arithmetic. The pulse keeps a steady beat you can think over, so the sum gets solved instead of guessed at twice.
All nine missionsQuestions people ask
Will Beacon ring if my iPhone is on silent?
Yes. Tock schedules alarms through Apple's AlarmKit, so they come up on the system alert and sound whether the ringer switch is on or off, and whether or not a Focus is running.
Can I make Beacon louder?
Set the ringer volume on your phone before bed. Tock cannot raise it for you, and no app can. If loudness alone has not worked before, turn on a wake-up mission instead of chasing volume.
How many wake tones does Tock come with?
Eighteen, Beacon included, and you can load your own audio if none of them fit.
Does Beacon work with smart wake?
It does. Smart wake watches the 30 minutes before your alarm and rings a little early if it finds a lighter moment. Your set time is always the backstop, so you never wake up late because the lighter moment never came.
Other wake tones
Eighteen ship with the app. These are the ones worth reading about first.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Elsewhere on the site
A different corner of the same problem.
- Wake timesWaking up at 8:00amBedtimes by sleep cycle for a 8:00am alarm.
- BedtimesGoing to bed at 8:00pmWhere to put the alarm after a 8:00pm lights-out.
- Sleep by ageHow much sleep babies needThe American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that infants aged 4 to 12 months sleep 12 to 16 hours per 24 hours, including naps, on a regular basis. Sleep at this age is spread across the day rather than consolidated into one block, and the total is what the recommendation is about.
- NapsThe 60 minute napA 60 minute nap includes a substantial amount of slow wave sleep, which is useful for recovery and for some kinds of memory, and it usually ends before the cycle completes. That means the benefit is real and the wake-up is often groggy, so it suits situations where the hour afterwards is flexible.
- Head to headSleep Cycle vs SnoreLabIf someone in the bed has complained about your snoring and you want to test whether anything helps, SnoreLab. If you want a picture of the whole night and an alarm at the end of it, Sleep Cycle.
- FeaturesSmart wakeSmart wake is a 30 minute window before your alarm in which Tock watches for a lighter moment in your sleep and rings as soon as it finds one. If it never finds one, your alarm goes off at the exact time you set.
An alarm that rings on silent, and then asks for something
Tock is built on Apple AlarmKit, so it rings through silent mode and a Focus with the app closed. Then it keeps ringing until you solve one of nine missions.