Sleep sounds
Pink noise for sleep
Somewhere between the brightness of white and the weight of brown there is a setting most people land on and then never move off. It also has a small research literature attached to it, which is worth reading carefully rather than repeating.
In short
Pink noise drops about 3 dB with every octave, which works out to equal energy in every octave and is close to how a lot of natural sound is distributed, from rain to wind in trees to tyres on a wet road. It reads as a balanced hush rather than a hiss or a rumble, which is why it is usually the right thing to try before you commit to either extreme.
- Roll-off per octave
- 3 dBRoll-off per octaveHalf the slope of brown. Equal energy in every octave is the same statement.
- Fall-asleep sounds
- 63Fall-asleep soundsGrouped as Noise, Nature, Rooms, Music and Dreamy.
- Longest fixed timer
- 90 minLongest fixed timerMaskers offer 30, 60, 90, or straight through to your alarm.
No web preview of this one
Pink noise is in the app, but we have not put a clip of it on this page. The pages that do carry one are white noise, rainfall, ocean, fan, fireplace and piano.
Equal energy in every octave is why it sounds even
Take any octave you like, 100 to 200 Hz or 4,000 to 8,000 Hz, and pink noise puts the same total energy in it. Because your hearing is roughly organised that way too, the result is a sound with no obvious centre of gravity, which is what people mean when they call it balanced.
The 3 dB slope is what makes that happen. Each octave up is twice as wide, so it needs half the power density to carry the same energy, and half the power is 3 dB down.
The world is already full of it
Rain on a roof, wind through trees, a waterfall a long way off, tyres on wet tarmac. All of these land close to a pink slope, which is a decent explanation for why they feel natural in a way a flat hiss does not.
Tyres on a wet road are the closest thing everyday life makes to pink noise, and that is the actual reason a passenger falls asleep in a car. Nothing to do with the motion.
What the studies say, and what they do not
There is a real strand of research on pink noise and sleep, mostly around steady sound played through the night or short pulses timed to brain activity. Some of it reports improvements in sleep continuity or memory tasks the next day.
Read the methods and the picture gets more careful. The samples are small, often a dozen or two people. The sessions are short. The pulse studies rely on lab equipment timing sound to an EEG signal, which is nothing like a phone playing a steady bed on your nightstand. Treat any of it as promising rather than settled.
Tock names its sounds for what they sound like, never for what they are supposed to do to you. That is a deliberate line and it does not move.
Gray noise is the other balanced option
If pink is close but not quite right, gray is worth a night. It is white noise shaped by the inverse of your ear's own sensitivity curve, so it measures as anything but flat and yet sounds more even than either white or pink to most people.
It ships in the same Noise group. There is no web preview of pink noise on this page, because Tock builds it on your phone rather than playing a file, but every one of the eight coloured noises is in the app and takes two taps to compare back to back.
Who it suits, and who it does not
Worth trying if
- A mixed room where the noise is not clearly high or clearly low
- Anyone starting from scratch who does not yet know which end they prefer
- Household sound: a corridor, a partner moving around, a fridge two rooms away
- People who want something that sounds close to rain without any of rain's irregularity
Probably skip it if
- Heavy low-frequency intrusion, where brown noise gets there with less volume
- Anyone who specifically wants the bright top end for sharp sounds, which is white's job
- Rooms where you would rather hear something with texture, since pink is deliberately featureless
How it behaves once it is running
- Tock generates it on device, sample by sample, so it never loops. Nothing to download, and no two nights sound the same.
- You can layer up to four sounds at once and save the result as a mix, so a bed you like is one tap the next night.
- A distance control puts it Far, Near or Close, which changes how present it feels rather than just how loud it is. 42 of the 63 sounds carry it.
- It fades with the sleep timer, and the good-night screen dims itself to near black after twenty seconds so the phone stops being a light source.
What to put underneath it
Four sounds at a time is the limit, and three is usually the sweet spot. These are the pairings that hold up.
- RainfallRain is already close to pink in shape, so this pair thickens rather than widens. Use it when pink alone is doing the job but feels too much like a machine.
- Gentle windWind drifts in level while pink holds still, so the pair gets slow movement without gaining anything your ear can lock onto and follow.
- StreamThe stream adds a bright, alive top over a flat middle, which suits a quiet room where you want company more than cover.
Questions people ask
Is pink noise or white noise better for sleep?
Pink suits more people, mostly because the high end is gentler and the low end has more substance. White wins when the specific thing waking you is high and sharp. The honest test is two nights each in your own room, which will settle it faster than any article.
Does pink noise really improve deep sleep?
Some small studies suggest steady or pulsed pink noise can help with sleep continuity, and a few report better next-day recall. They are small, short and often done with lab equipment that a phone cannot replicate. It is reasonable to try it. It is not reasonable to promise you a result, so we do not.
What is the difference between pink noise and rain?
They have a similar spectral shape, which is why they mask about equally well. The difference is regularity. Pink noise is perfectly steady, which some people find easier to ignore and others find sterile. Rain moves constantly at a small scale, which gives your ear something to give up on.
Related sounds
Nearby textures worth trying on a night this one does not land.
- White noiseWhite noise holds equal power in every one hertz band, which makes it the brightest of the sleep noises and the best at covering thin, sharp sounds: keys in a lock, a running tap, a voice through a wall. That same brightness is why plenty of people last about an hour before switching to pink or brown.
- Brown noiseBrown noise puts almost all of its energy in the low end, dropping roughly 6 dB with every octave you climb, so it reads as a rumble or distant surf rather than a hiss. That low weight is exactly why it covers traffic, footsteps and a neighbour's bass better than white noise does, and also why it can feel like pressure if your room is already quiet.
- RainfallSteady rainfall spreads its energy fairly evenly across the audible range, close enough to pink noise that it masks about as well while sounding a great deal less like a machine. The bigger variable is the surface: rain on canvas, on glass and on a car roof are three genuinely different sounds, and only one of them will suit your room.
- FanA fan makes broadband noise from air turbulence plus a very quiet periodic thump from the blades, sitting somewhere between pink and brown in balance, which is why so many people sleep to one without ever calling it white noise. Tock uses a recording of an actual fan rather than generating it, because that blade rhythm is the thing that makes it read as a fan at all.
Elsewhere on the site
A different corner of the same problem.
- Sleep by ageHow much sleep older adults needThe American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommendation of 7 or more hours per night applies to adults without an upper age cut-off. What changes with age is not how much sleep is needed but how easily it is obtained: the night becomes lighter, more broken, and shifts earlier.
- 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.
- Wake tonesNature 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.
- Head to headAlarmy vs Sleep CyclePick Alarmy if you sleep through alarms and need one you can't beat. Pick Sleep Cycle if you wake up on time but feel wrecked when you do, and you want a gentler window plus a record of the night.
- FeaturesWidgetsTock 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.
- Tock for youNight owlsYou are wide awake at 1am and useless at 7am, and every piece of advice you have ever read starts with going to bed earlier, which you have done, repeatedly, while staring at the ceiling.
You cannot just decide to fall asleep
Pink noise is one of 63 sounds in Tock. Layer four at a time, save the mix, and let the alarm wake you at a lighter moment in the morning.