Sleep sounds
Thunderstorm sounds for sleep
Every other bed on this list holds a roughly steady level from lights-out to morning. This one deliberately does not, and that single difference decides whether it belongs in your room.
In short
Far-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.
- Default fade
- 30 minDefault fadeFall-asleep aids offer 15, 30, 45 or 60 minutes and then stop.
- Layers in one mix
- 4Layers in one mixA storm alone is full of gaps. Under rain it becomes a different sound.
- Recordings in the library
- 22Recordings in the libraryThunder is one of them, because synthesised thunder never quite lands.
No web preview of this one
Distant storm 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.
The swell is both the appeal and the problem
Thunder arrives as a long rise and a longer decay, tens of seconds end to end. That slowness is genuinely pleasant while you are still awake, because it is something to follow that asks nothing of you.
Once you are asleep it becomes a liability. Masking works by holding the noise floor steady so nothing sudden stands out against it. A sound that keeps dropping back to near-silence between rolls is a sound that keeps rebuilding the contrast you were trying to remove.
Tock ships this page's sound in the app but does not have a web preview of it here. It is under Nature, listed as Distant storm.
Ten miles away is what makes it soothing
A storm overhead has a crack in it, a sharp transient with a lot of high frequency energy. A storm ten miles away has none of that, because air and terrain absorb the top end first, leaving only the low roll. That is why the same phenomenon can be either frightening or soothing depending purely on how far away it is.
Tock's recording is a deliberately distant one for that reason, and the Far setting pushes it further still. Close brings it nearer without ever giving you the crack, which would be a wake-up sound rather than a sleep one.
Fall-asleep aids fade, maskers do not
Tock splits its library by what a sound is actually for. Maskers hold a steady level and can run through to your alarm. Fall-asleep aids like this one are built to be interesting, so they default to 30 minutes and offer 15, 45 or 60 instead.
You can override it, and if storms are your thing, go ahead. Just know the app is not being cautious for the sake of it. A sound designed to have shape in it is a sound with something in it to wake up for.
Who it suits, and who it does not
Worth trying if
- The first half hour, when you want something slow to hand your attention to
- People who genuinely sleep better in weather and always have
- Layering under rain, where the storm supplies the drama and the rain supplies the floor
Probably skip it if
- All-night use, which is why the app fades it rather than offering to run it to your alarm
- Light sleepers, since a swell is a level change and level changes are what pull you back up
- Anyone who finds storms unsettling rather than cosy, which is more common than sleep apps admit
How it behaves once it is running
- It is one of the 22 bundled recordings, so it plays from the app with nothing to fetch.
- 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.
- RainfallThe obvious one and the right one. Rain fills the long gaps between rolls, so the storm stops being a series of separate events and becomes weather.
- Brown noiseBrown noise sits in the same low range as the thunder, so it hides the quiet parts of each swell and flattens out how far the level drops between rolls.
- Gentle windWind drifting under the thunder makes the whole thing feel like it is moving past you rather than sitting still overhead.
Questions people ask
Should I leave a thunderstorm playing all night?
Usually not. The rolls change level constantly, and a changing level is the thing that pulls light sleepers back up. Use it for the first half hour, and if you want weather all night, run rain underneath and let the storm fade out on its own.
Why is there no lightning crack in it?
Because a crack is a sharp transient and sharp transients wake people. The recording is a genuinely distant storm, where the air has already absorbed the high frequencies and left only the roll. Bringing it closer with the distance control adds presence but never adds the crack.
Is a storm better than plain rain for sleep?
For falling asleep, some people find it better because it gives attention somewhere to go. For staying asleep, rain wins every time, because it is steady and the storm is not. Layering the two is how you get both.
Related sounds
Nearby textures worth trying on a night this one does not land.
- 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.
- Gentle windWind is broadband noise shaped by whatever it is moving past, drifting slowly up and down in level with no rhythm your ear can lock onto, which makes it unusually easy to stop noticing. It masks gently rather than firmly, so it belongs in a wind-down more than it belongs in a fight with a busy street.
- OceanRolling surf is broadband like rain, but it breathes, cresting and receding on a cycle of about ten seconds, and a lot of people find that slow rise easier to let go of than a flat hush. The cost is that the level moves, so it masks less reliably at the quiet end of every cycle than steady noise does.
- FireplaceA fire is a soft broadband roar with sparse, sharp crackles laid on top, and those crackles are transients, precisely the kind of sudden sound a light sleeper surfaces for. It is one of the best wind-down sounds in the library and one of the weakest choices to leave running until morning.
Elsewhere on the site
A different corner of the same problem.
- 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 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 tonesCustom alarm soundTock comes with 18 wake tones, and if none of them suit you it takes your own audio as the alarm instead. Whatever you choose still gets scheduled through Apple's AlarmKit, so the silent switch, an active Focus and a fully closed app have no bearing on whether it rings.
- Head to headCalm vs PzizzIf you nap, or if hearing the same recording twice ruins it for you, Pzizz is the better buy. If you want big-name narrators and a library that carries you through the daytime too, Calm is the deeper product.
- 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 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.
You cannot just decide to fall asleep
Distant storm 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.