Features
Every part of Tock, including where each one stops working
Tock does one thing: it takes the moment you get woken and makes it less arbitrary. Everything else exists to serve that. These pages go through each piece, how it works rather than what it promises, and the limit you would otherwise discover at six in the morning.
Tock's alarm is built on Apple AlarmKit, so it rings on silent, through a Focus, with the app closed. Smart wake watches the last 30 minutes for a lighter moment and rings a little early, with your set time as the fallback. Wake-up missions keep it ringing until you solve something. The rest of the app is the night around that.
- Fall-asleep sounds
- 63Fall-asleep soundsLayer four, save the mix
- Wake-up missions
- 9Wake-up missionsMind, body and place
- Insight metrics
- 21Insight metricsAcross seven groups
The alarm is the mechanism, everything else is context
Most sleep apps are trackers with an alarm bolted on. Tock is the other way round. The microphone and accelerometer run all night because that is what lets the alarm pick a moment, not because a chart is the product. Apple SoundAnalysis classifies snores, coughs and sleep talking on the device itself, and the clips stay on the phone so you can play back what woke you.
Start with why it rings on silent if you want the mechanism, or smart wake if you want the part that changes how mornings feel.
The alarm itself
The part that has to work on the one morning it matters.
- Alarm on silentTock's alarms are registered with iOS through Apple's AlarmKit framework rather than played by the app in the background. That is why they ring with the ringer off, through a Focus, with Tock closed, on the native full-screen alert.
- Smart 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.
- Wake-up missionsA wake-up mission is a small task that has to be completed before the alarm will stop. Tock ships 9 of them in 3 families: mind, body and place. The alarm keeps ringing the whole time the task is on screen.
The night before it
Winding down, falling asleep, and what the phone hears while you do.
- Wind-downWind-down is a short guided routine you run before sleep. It has 6 steps you can reorder or drop, three lengths, and a 30 second drift at the end that hands you over to the good-night screen.
- Sleep soundsTock has 63 fall-asleep sounds. You can play four at a time, save the blend as a mix, and 42 of them carry a Far, Near or Close distance control. 22 are bundled recordings and the rest are generated on the phone as you listen, so they never loop.
- Sleep trackingSleep tracking in Tock runs on the phone alone. The microphone and the accelerometer stay awake all night, Apple SoundAnalysis labels sounds like snoring, coughing and sleep talking on device, and the clips are saved so you can play them back in the morning.
- Snore recordingTock keeps short audio clips of the things it hears in the night and pins each one to the minute it happened. Snoring, coughing and sleep talking are labelled by name, and every clip has a play button in the morning.
What you get in the morning
A score, an explanation of it, and a reason to do it again tomorrow.
- Sleep 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 coachThe sleep coach is a chat tab inside Tock that reads your recent nights before it answers. It can quote your score, play back a clip Tock recorded, and navigate the app to change a setting on your behalf. It needs a network connection.
- StreaksTock counts a night toward your streak at 90% of your sleep goal, and it bridges one missed night per week automatically. Milestones sit at 3, 7, 14, 30, 60, 100, 180 and 365 nights, drawn as a moon rather than a flame.
Everywhere else on the phone
Health data coming in, and Tock showing up outside its own app.
- Apple HealthTock reads Apple Health for sleep, heart rate, resting heart rate, HRV, blood oxygen, respiratory rate and wrist temperature, and shows them on the night they belong to. It can also write its own nights back into Health, but that setting defaults to off.
- WidgetsTock puts tonight outside the app: 3 Home Screen widgets, Lock Screen and StandBy accessories, 3 Control Center tiles, 8 Live Activities, Siri App Shortcuts, 4 quick actions on the icon and a Focus filter.
Questions people ask
Does Tock ring if my iPhone is on silent?
Yes. Tock is built on Apple AlarmKit, so its alarms are system alarms rather than an app trying to play audio in the background. They ring on silent, inside a Focus, and with the app closed, on the native full-screen alert.
Does Tock measure my sleep stages?
On a phone-only night it estimates them from movement and sound, and labels them as estimates. Measured stages need a wearable, and Tock will read those from Apple Health if you have one. It has no Apple Watch app of its own.
What do I need for Tock to work?
An iPhone running iOS 26 or later, and somewhere on the nightstand to put it. No wearable, no hardware, nothing to pair. There is a 3 day trial and then a subscription, from $39.99 a year.
Can I turn the wake-up missions off?
Yes. Missions are on by default because they are the thing that actually gets people out of bed, but the alarm works without them. Smart wake is also on by default and can be switched off in the same place.
Elsewhere on the site
Different corner of the same problem.
- Wake tonesGentle 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.
- 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.
- Sleep soundsDistant stormFar-off thunder helps at the start of the night because the slow rolling swells give your attention something easy to follow while it lets go, and it hurts later because every roll is a change in level, which is exactly what surfaces a light sleeper. Tock treats it as a fall-asleep aid and fades it out after half an hour by default.
- 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.
Mornings are hard when your alarm rips you out of deep sleep
Tock learns your rhythm and rings at a lighter moment instead. Thirty three languages, no wearable needed, on iPhone.