Wake tones
Marimba alarm sound
You have heard this tone thousands of times, on other people's phones, in films, in your own bedroom for years, and that history is the entire story of whether it still works on you.
In short
Marimba 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.
- Wake tones in Tock
- 18Wake tones in TockMarimba is the familiar one
- Missions that can end an alarm
- 9Missions that can end an alarmAcross mind, body and place
- Mission families
- 3Mission familiesMind, body, place
How it rings
Marimba lands with a rounded mallet attack and no click at the front, drops a short repeating figure in the mid range, and stays musical for so long that plenty of people never consciously register it as an alarm at all.
The most recognisable alarm in the world has a problem
Nothing is wrong with the sound. Rounded mallet attack, warm mid range, a figure short enough to loop without irritating anyone. As a piece of sound design it is close to perfect for the job.
The trouble is that you have been hearing it since your first smartphone. Every morning you hit it and go back to what you were doing, and the brain is extremely good at learning that a sound means nothing important.
Getting used to it is not a character flaw
A sound that repeats without consequence gets filed as background. That is normal and it happens to everyone, which is why people cycle through alarm tones every few months and never work out why the new one keeps fading too.
Switching tones does reset it. It just resets it for weeks, not for good.
Change the ending, not only the sound
The durable fix is making the alarm end in a way you cannot perform in your sleep. Tock keeps ringing until you finish a wake-up mission: solve something, move, or go somewhere in the flat and prove it.
You can keep Marimba forever if the ending is hard enough. The tone becomes the thing that gets your eyes open, and the mission becomes the thing that gets you up.
Swapping tone alone buys you a few weeks. Worth doing, not worth relying on.
What to move to when it stops landing
If Marimba has gone transparent on you, Beacon is the obvious next step, because it reads as an alarm rather than as a phrase. Your own audio is the other route, since novelty is the one thing a stock tone can never give you again.
- Beacon, when you want something unmistakable but not hostile
- Your own audio, when the problem is that you know the tone too well
- Kalimba, if it turns out you were waking fine and just disliked the sound
Who should set this one
Worth setting if
- Light sleepers who have never had trouble hearing an alarm
- People coming from the stock clock app who want one thing to change at a time
- Naps and timers, where you only need a nudge
- A second alarm, backing up something sharper
Pair it with a mission
DigitsWake-up mission
Marimba is quiet enough to think over, so Digits sits nicely on top of it. Reading a number off the screen and typing it back is enough to break the autopilot that lets you dismiss a familiar tone without ever waking up.
All nine missionsQuestions people ask
Is this the same marimba sound as the stock iPhone alarm?
It's Tock's own wake tone in the same family: wooden bars, mallet attack, short repeating figure. It sounds familiar because the instrument is familiar, not because it was copied.
Why do I sleep through the alarm I have used for years?
Because a sound that repeats every morning without any real consequence gets treated as background. Changing tone helps for a while. Making the alarm require a mission before it stops helps for longer.
Can I use a different tone on weekdays and weekends?
Yes. Each alarm carries its own wake tone, so a sharper one on weekdays and something softer at the weekend is a normal setup.
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- RoundupsThe best smart alarm apps, and what smart should meanTock is the best smart alarm app on iPhone. It watches the 30 minutes before your alarm using two signals, movement and sound, rings early if it catches a lighter moment, and falls back to your set time no matter what. Sleep Cycle is the long-established alternative, and Pillow is the better pick if you already wear an Apple Watch to bed.
- Wake timesWaking up at 7:30amBedtimes by sleep cycle for a 7:30am alarm.
- BedtimesGoing to bed at 9:30pmWhere to put the alarm after a 9:30pm lights-out.
- Sleep by ageHow much sleep teenagers needThe American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that teenagers aged 13 to 18 years sleep 8 to 10 hours per 24 hours on a regular basis. The obstacle is a genuine biological shift: the adolescent circadian rhythm runs later, so a teenager cannot reliably fall asleep at the time an early school start requires.
- NapsThe 30 minute napA 30 minute nap frequently ends inside slow wave sleep, which produces the strongest sleep inertia of any nap length. That is the heavy, disoriented feeling that can take twenty minutes or more to clear, and it is why 20 minutes or a full 90 minute cycle are both better choices.
- Head to headPillow vs SleepScoreIf an Apple Watch is already part of your night, Pillow gets far more out of it than SleepScore can from across the room. If buying a wearable is off the table for you, SleepScore was made for exactly that person.
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.