Wake tones
Music box alarm sound
Wind a music box and you get a small thin melody that slows down as it runs out of tension, which is more or less what this tone does to a morning.
In short
Music 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.
- Wake tones in the app
- 18Wake tones in the appThis is the gentlest of them
- Smart wake window
- 30 minSmart wake windowWhere a soft tone earns its place
- Wake-up missions
- 9Wake-up missionsThe part that gets you upright
How it rings
The notes are thin and bell-like with almost no low end, the melody moves slowly and leaves stretches of near-silence between phrases, and it can loop for a minute before it ever begins to feel urgent.
Nostalgia is doing most of the work
Nobody picks this tone for its acoustic properties. They pick it because a music box sounds like childhood, and starting the day with something you have warm feelings about is a real benefit even if it does not show up in any metric.
That is a fine reason. Just know that is the reason, so you can be clear-eyed about the trade you are making.
The silence between phrases is the flaw
This tone leaves gaps. In those gaps a half-woken brain gets a chance to settle back down, and the next phrase has to start the job over from scratch. Tones that repeat on a tight beat never give you that opening.
It also has very little energy low down, so a duvet over your head takes more of it away than it would from a fuller tone.
If you sleep hard, treat Music box as a nap tone and put Beacon on the morning alarm.
Where a weak tone is still the right call
Some people do not have a waking problem, they have a getting-up problem. The alarm reaches them fine and then they lie there resenting it. For that, a tone you do not flinch at is worth more than a tone that works harder.
Combine it with a mission and the soft tone stops being a risk, because ending the alarm still takes something real from you rather than a swipe.
Who should set this one
Worth setting if
- Light sleepers who wake at almost anything
- A partner or a child in the room you do not want to wake as well
- Afternoon naps, where a hard alarm leaves you worse off
- Anyone whose real problem is dread of the alarm rather than missing it
Pair it with a mission
OrderWake-up mission
Order is a slow, deliberate mission, and Music box does not rush you through it. If you wake up easily and just need a reason not to roll over, the pair is genuinely pleasant. If you sleep through things, this is the wrong half of the app to be fixing.
All nine missionsQuestions people ask
Will a music box alarm wake me up?
If you are a light sleeper, yes. If you routinely sleep through alarms, no, and no amount of setting up will change that. Choose a tone with a tighter repeat and add a wake-up mission.
Can I use it as a fall-asleep sound too?
It's a wake tone, so it belongs to the alarm rather than the sleep library. Tock has 63 separate fall-asleep sounds for the other end of the night, and you can layer four of them at once.
Does the tone affect whether smart wake works?
No. Smart wake decides when to ring; the tone only decides what you hear when it does. Any of the 18 will work with it.
Other wake tones
Eighteen ship with the app. These are the ones worth reading about first.
- 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.
- 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.
Elsewhere on the site
A different corner of the same problem.
- AlternativesTock vs Sleep as AndroidSleep as Android is Android only, so an iPhone owner cannot have it at any price. Tock is the nearest thing on iOS in spirit: sleep tracking from the phone, a smart wake window, snore detection and a task before the alarm stops. It is not as deep, and it does not talk to your smart bulbs.
- RoundupsThe best free alarm apps for iPhoneThe best free alarm app for iPhone is the Clock app that came with it. It is free forever, it rings through silent mode and a Focus, and it has never failed. Alarmy is the best free option if you need an alarm that is hard to turn off. Tock is not free and is listed last for that reason.
- Wake timesWaking up at 6:30amBedtimes by sleep cycle for a 6:30am alarm.
- BedtimesGoing to bed at 9:00pmWhere to put the alarm after a 9:00pm lights-out.
- Sleep by ageHow much sleep preschoolers needThe American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that children aged 3 to 5 years sleep 10 to 13 hours per 24 hours, including naps, on a regular basis. This is the final band where daytime sleep counts toward the total; from age 6 the figures are given per night.
- 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.
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.