Features
The half hour before bed decides how the night goes
You cannot decide to fall asleep the way you decide to stand up. What you can do is stop doing the things that keep you awake, in an order that works.
Wind-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.
- Steps you can reorder or drop
- 6Steps you can reorder or drop
- Lengths
- 3LengthsShort, Standard and Long
- Drift that closes the routine
- 30 secDrift that closes the routine
How it actually works
Six steps, in whatever order suits you
Wind-down is a sequence you move through, not an audio track you press play on. There are six steps and you drag them into the order you want or drop the ones you do not need. Set the room deals with lights, temperature and where the phone is going to spend the night. Loosen up is a few minutes of physical unwinding. Let go of the day is somewhere to put whatever is still going round. Breathe is a paced breathing screen. Set tomorrow aside gets tomorrow out of your head and onto the phone. One good thing ends the routine on something that went right.
Pick Short, Standard or Long and the whole routine stretches or contracts to fit, which is the difference between a routine you keep on a late night and one you skip. It closes with a 30 second drift, which is exactly what it sounds like: the screen goes quiet and you stop doing things. Then the good-night screen takes over, dims to near black after 20 seconds untouched, and stays on until the alarm.
- All six steps are reorderable, so the one you actually need can go first
- Skipping a step does not break the routine, it moves on
- Three lengths, so the same routine survives a night you got home late
Short, Standard and Long change how long the routine runs, not which steps are in it.
Why the order you pick matters more than the steps
Two people can run the same six steps and get completely different nights out of them. Somebody whose head is full of tomorrow should put Set tomorrow aside early, before anything asks them to relax. Somebody who is physically wired after a late gym session wants Loosen up first and Breathe last.
Build the order around what actually keeps you awake, not around what looks tidy in a list.
A first week that will not collapse
The failure mode of every bedtime routine is ambition. A twenty minute ritual you abandon on day four is worse than a five minute one you keep.
- Start on Short, with three steps, for the first week
- Run it at the same time rather than at the same tiredness level
- Add a step only once you have missed none for several nights
- Move to Standard when Short starts feeling too brief rather than because a week has passed
What Set the room is really asking
It is the only step that changes your environment rather than your head, and it is the one people skip fastest because it feels obvious. Lights down, temperature down, and the phone in the place it will stay all night. Doing it as a step rather than as an intention is most of the value.
Where the routine hands over
The drift ends and the good-night screen appears. It shows tonight in the quietest form Tock has, and after 20 seconds without a touch it dims to near black so it does not light up your bedroom. Tap it and it comes back. Nothing about it wants your attention.
Where it stops
Every feature has an edge. Better you read it here than find it at six in the morning.
- A routine is a habit, not a switch. The first few nights mostly teach you which steps you resent.
- It cannot compete with a phone you pick up again afterwards, or with coffee at 5pm.
- If something is genuinely keeping you awake, a breathing screen is not the answer to it.
- Wind-down runs before the night starts, so it does nothing about a 3am wake-up.
Questions people ask
How long does wind-down take?
That is what Short, Standard and Long are for. The same six steps stretch or contract, so you pick the length that fits the night you actually had.
Do I have to do all six steps?
No. Drop the ones that do nothing for you and reorder the rest. A three step routine you keep beats a six step one you skip.
What happens when it finishes?
A 30 second drift, then the good-night screen, which dims to near black after 20 seconds untouched and stays on all night.
The rest of the app
The parts that sit closest to this one.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Elsewhere on the site
Different corner of the same problem.
- Tock for youStudentsYou go to bed at a different time every night, set an alarm you already know you will sleep through, and you cannot just turn the volume up because there is someone asleep two metres away.
- AlternativesTock vs AlarmyIf all you need is a harder alarm, Alarmy has more dismissal tasks than Tock and a free tier, so it is the sensible pick. Tock is worth paying for when you want the night tracked and the ring moved earlier into light sleep, with a mission still standing between you and the off button.
- 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.
- Wake timesWaking up at 5:00amBedtimes by sleep cycle for a 5:00am alarm.
- 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 headRise vs SleepScoreIf you will genuinely change your bedtime because an app asked you to, Rise is the more useful of the two. If you want the night measured properly without wearing anything, SleepScore.
The half hour before bed decides how the night goes
Wind-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.