Written for
Everything wakes you up
A door in the hallway, a car door in the street, the heating clicking on, somebody turning over next to you. None of it is loud. All of it is enough.
In short
You wake at everything, and then you are awake for forty minutes at 3am doing arithmetic on how much is left. By morning you cannot say what woke you, only that something did, several times.
- sounds with Far, Near and Close
- 42sounds with Far, Near and Close
- sounds layered into a single mix
- 4sounds layered into a single mix
- fall-asleep sounds, none of them looping
- 63fall-asleep sounds, none of them loopingMost are generated on the phone sample by sample
It is the contrast, not the volume
A sound wakes you when it stands out against the background, not when it crosses some threshold of loudness. That is why a silent room is often the worst room: with nothing underneath it, a door two floors down is the loudest thing that has happened all night.
Raise the floor with something steady and the same door stops being an event. This is the entire mechanism behind masking sound, and it is why a fan works better than earplugs for some people and worse for others.
The room comes before the app
Physical changes are dull and they outperform everything on this page.
- Heavy curtains and a rug. Soft surfaces kill the reflections that make a small sound carry.
- Fix whatever clicks, bangs or hums. A door catch and a felt pad cost almost nothing.
- Keep the room cool. You surface more easily from a warm room, which makes every noise more likely to land.
- Earplugs are cheap and they work. Try them before anything with a subscription.
- If the sound waking you is the person next to you snoring, that is worth them raising with a doctor rather than you solving forever with foam.
Something to put over the top of it
Tock ships 63 fall-asleep sounds and you can layer four at once and save the result as a mix, so the floor you raise is one you chose rather than one preset. Most of them are generated on the phone sample by sample instead of playing a file, so there is no loop point for your brain to learn and no two nights sound the same.
The part that matters most for a light sleeper is the distance control on 42 of them: Far, Near or Close. Rain set to Far is a different object to rain set to Close. It fills the room without becoming the new thing you are lying there listening to.
In the morning you get to hear what woke you
Tracking runs the microphone and the accelerometer all night from the nightstand, and Apple SoundAnalysis classifies snores, coughs and sleep talking on the phone itself. The clips are kept and you can play them back against the night.
That usually settles an argument you have been having with yourself. People are confident it is the road and find it is the radiator, or confident it is nothing and find the same sound at 02:10 every night.
It tells you what it heard. It cannot tell you why you woke, and sometimes there was no sound at all.
The parts of Tock that apply to you
Not all of it will. These are the ones that do something specific about the problem above.
- Sleep soundsDistance control on 42 of them, so you can push the rain out to Far and raise the noise floor without adding a new thing to lie there listening to.
- Sleep trackingThe clips tell you what was actually happening at 03:10, which for most light sleepers turns out not to be what they had assumed for years.
- Snore recordingIf the thing waking you is snoring from the other side of the bed, you end up with a recording instead of an argument about whether it happened.
- Smart wakeYou surface more often than most people do, so there is nearly always a light moment in the last half hour for it to use.
Where Tock will not help
- Masking makes a sound less startling. It does not remove it. A genuinely loud street needs glazing, not a playlist.
- Playing sound all night uses battery. Keep the phone on a charger on the nightstand, which is where it has to be for tracking anyway.
- Tock can tell you what it heard. It cannot tell you why you woke, and plenty of wakings have no sound attached to them at all.
- If the person beside you snores loudly and is tired all day, that is a conversation for their doctor. Tock is not a medical device and does not assess anybody.
Tock estimates your sleep and is not a medical device. Nothing it shows you is a diagnosis, and anything that worries you is a conversation for a doctor rather than an app.
Questions people ask
Why does steady noise help if my problem is noise?
Because what wakes you is a sound standing out from the background, not the sound on its own. Something steady lifts the background, so the door downstairs stops being the loudest event of the night.
What sound should a light sleeper start with?
Something broad and featureless rather than something with a rhythm, set to Far. Rain and noise-family sounds do the job with the least to listen to. Add a second layer only if the first one leaves gaps.
Can Tock tell me what woke me up?
It can tell you what it heard. The microphone runs all night, snores, coughs and sleep talking are classified on the phone, and the clips are playable against your night. Whether that sound is what woke you is still your call.
Will it record my partner as well as me?
Yes. The microphone hears the room, not a person, so anything it picks up in a shared bed could be either of you. Worth knowing before you take a recording as proof of anything.
Other situations
The same problem seen from a different bed.
- SnorersSomeone has told you that you snore, or you have woken yourself up doing it, and you have no idea how loud it really is or whether it is the kind of thing that matters.
- New 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.
- Night shift workersYou finish at 7am and try to sleep while the sun is up, the neighbours are drilling and your phone is on silent so nothing wakes you. Then you have to get up on time anyway, in the middle of what your body still thinks is the afternoon.
- People who hate morningsThe alarm goes off and you feel physically wrong. Not tired exactly, more like you were pulled out of something, and it takes the better part of an hour before you are a person again.
Elsewhere on the site
A different corner of the same problem.
- 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 sleep trackers that don't need a watchTock is the best sleep tracker without a watch. Leave the phone on the nightstand and it uses the microphone and accelerometer all night, classifies snores, coughs and sleep talking on device, and hands you a report plus the audio in the morning. SleepScore is the strongest alternative if you would rather nothing listened to the room.
- Wake timesWaking up at 5:30amBedtimes by sleep cycle for a 5:30am alarm.
- BedtimesGoing to bed at 12:00amWhere to put the alarm after a 12:00am lights-out.
- Sleep by ageHow much sleep adults needThe American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that adults sleep 7 or more hours per night on a regular basis to promote optimal health. It is expressed as a minimum rather than a range because the evidence supports a lower bound far more firmly than it supports an ideal figure.
- NapsThe coffee napA coffee nap means drinking caffeine and then immediately napping for about 20 minutes. Caffeine takes roughly 20 to 30 minutes to have a noticeable effect, so it does not stop you falling asleep quickly, and you wake as it takes hold. The two effects add rather than cancel.
Start with the moment you get woken
It is the one part of your night you can change tonight. Tock waits for a lighter moment in the last half hour and rings a little early when it finds one.