Wake tones
Loud alarm sounds
Volume is the first thing people reach for and close to the last thing that fixes the problem, which is why this page spends more time on the ending than on the tone.
In short
Tock'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.
- Ways to end an alarm
- 9Ways to end an alarmA mission, not a swipe
- Wake tones in Tock
- 18Wake tones in TockSome clear, some soft
- Mission families
- 3Mission familiesMind, body and place
Nothing to play on this page
This page is about a kind of wake tone rather than one specific sound, so there is no single clip to put here. Beacon, Kalimba, Marimba and Musicbox all have one.
How it rings
A loud tone leads with a hard front edge and a lot of mid-range energy, repeats fast enough that there is no quiet gap to sink back into, and turns unpleasant within a few seconds by design, which is the entire point of it.
Silent mode and volume are two different problems
People conflate them constantly. Silent mode is about whether the alarm makes any sound at all, and Tock settles that: alarms go through Apple's AlarmKit, so they arrive on the system full-screen alert and sound regardless of the ringer switch, regardless of a Focus, and regardless of whether the app has been open since last night.
Volume is about how loud that sound is, and that number lives on your phone. Set it before bed, the same way you would check the alarm itself.
There is no player on this page, because loudness is a setting on your device and not something a browser can honestly demonstrate.
Loud wakes you, it does not keep you awake
Watch what actually happens on a bad morning. The alarm reaches you, you silence it in a second or two, and you have no memory of any of it. Volume was never the failure point. The dismissal was.
Tock keeps ringing until you finish a wake-up mission. Nine of them, across mind, body and place, and none of them can be done with a thumb from under the covers.
Set this up the night before
Three small decisions do more than any tone change. Make them once and stop thinking about it.
- Turn the ringer volume up before you get into bed, because Tock cannot do it for you
- Put the phone out of arm's reach if you are using Steps or a place mission
- Pick a mission you cannot fake half asleep, and resist making it easier after a rough week
Harsh is not the same as effective
The tone people describe as the loudest is usually just the ugliest, sitting in the frequencies that make you wince. That earns a fast reaction for a week and then your sleeping brain learns the shortcut to silence, same as it did with the last one.
Clear beats harsh over months. Beacon rings clean enough that it never becomes wallpaper, and the mission carries the rest.
Who should set this one
Worth setting if
- Heavy sleepers who have overslept something that mattered
- Early shifts where being late has a real cost
- Noisy streets, thin curtains and flatmates who are already up
- A backup alarm sitting ten minutes behind a softer one
Pair it with a mission
StepsWake-up mission
Steps needs you upright and moving, which is the only reliable way to stop a loud alarm turning into a loud snooze. Leave the phone across the room and the tone has already done its job by the time you reach it.
All nine missionsQuestions people ask
Can Tock override my phone volume?
No. iOS does not let an app change your ringer volume, and any app promising it either cannot deliver or is describing silent mode instead. Tock rings through silent mode; the level is yours to set.
Does the alarm still ring if I close the app?
Yes. The alarm is scheduled through AlarmKit, so iOS owns it. Force quitting Tock, going into a Focus or flipping the silent switch does not stop it.
What is the loudest tone in Tock?
Beacon carries furthest at a given volume, because it sits in a range hearing is sensitive to and repeats on a tight beat. If it still is not enough, the answer is a harder mission rather than a harsher sound.
Will a loud alarm wake my partner too?
Probably. If that is the constraint, a clearer tone at a lower volume plus a mission usually works better than a loud tone they also have to live with.
Other wake tones
Eighteen ship with the app. These are the ones worth reading about first.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Sleep soundsSleeper trainA sleeper train bed is a low broadband rumble with a slow, regular rail rhythm over it and the closed-in quality of a cabin, and that combination masks well while giving your attention something gentle to rest on. The rhythm is also the catch: a regular pattern is something you can start tracking again if you surface at 3am.
- Tock for youEarly risersYou are up before your alarm most days, lying there working out whether to get up or risk another twenty minutes. On the days you go back to sleep, you feel worse than if you had just got out of bed.
- AlternativesTock vs AutoSleepIf you wear an Apple Watch to bed and you already have an alarm you like, AutoSleep is hard to beat and you pay for it once. Tock makes sense if you do not want to sleep in a watch, or you want the alarm and the tracking to be the same app.
- RoundupsThe best alarm clock apps for iPhoneFor most iPhone owners the best alarm clock app is the one already installed. The Clock app is free, reliable and enough. Tock is the upgrade worth paying for once the Clock app stops working, which usually means you dismiss it without remembering or you wake up feeling wrecked every morning.
- Wake timesWaking up at 4:00amBedtimes by sleep cycle for a 4:00am alarm.
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.