How Stillee works
The 3 AM mode: what Stillee does when you wake in the night
Open Stillee between 1 and 5 AM and it is in its 3 AM mode. The screen goes dark and quiet, with no clock, no numbers and nothing to buy, and it offers a few things made for being awake, not for winding down. The panic button stays one tap away.
Why 3 AM gets its own mode
Bedtime content assumes you're tired and drifting off. At 3 AM you're awake, the room is dark, and morning is coming whether you sleep or not. When we needed something at that hour, every app offered a library and a bedtime voice. So the 3 AM mode is kept apart from bedtime content.
What you see
Between 1 and 5 AM, Today becomes a single dark column. No clock, no numbers, no streak, no check-ins, no locked cards. One line tells you nothing is required of you. Below it are a few doors: Awake at 3am, the Sound Bath piece 3 AM Room, and The 3am Mind.
The clock is left off on purpose. In two experiments, people told to watch a clock while trying to fall asleep worried more and took longer to fall asleep than people who didn't. That held for good sleepers, poor sleepers and people with insomnia. The study looked at falling asleep, not at getting back to sleep after waking, but the worry it describes is the same one that keeps you up at 3 AM.
The Sleep tab stays dark at every hour, and its night tracks sit on their own shelf, "Back to sleep", apart from the bedtime ones.
The 3 AM breathing mode
If you'd rather breathe than listen, breathing has a 3 AM mode of its own. The screen goes pitch black, the pacing is a pulse you feel in your hand, there's no clock, and it stops on its own. No light. No timer staring back at you.
The night tracks
| Track | Length | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Awake at 3am | 4 min | Names what's happening, says you don't have to perform sleep, then six rounds of cyclic sighing |
| The 3am Mind | 7 min | Paradoxical intention, the practice of not trying to sleep, with ACT defusion for the thoughts |
| Boring Walk Through a Library | 6 min | A slow stream of unrelated images, for a mind stuck on a problem |
| Body Sweep for the Sleepless | 9 min | Active progressive muscle relaxation, for a body that won't settle |
| After a Nightmare | 4 min | Grounding through the five senses, adapted for the dark, then slow breathing |
| Parent Return to Sleep | 5 min | For the parent who just got the baby back down |
| Out of Bed | 7 min | For when you've left the bed after lying awake too long |
| If You're Still Awake | 40 min | A quiet companion, then a prompt that it may be time to leave the bed |
All from the app's catalog.
The research behind them
- Cyclic sighing is a breath with a long exhale. In a Stanford study, five minutes a day of exhale-focused cyclic sighing improved mood and lowered breathing rate more than mindfulness meditation did over a month. That study tested a daily practice, not use in the night.
- Paradoxical intention means you stop trying to sleep. A meta-analysis of 10 trials found large improvements in insomnia symptoms against passive comparisons and moderate ones against active treatments. Its authors call for stronger studies.
- Relaxation and stimulus control. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine gives each a conditional recommendation on its own. Stimulus control is the rule behind "Out of Bed" and "If You're Still Awake": if sleep isn't coming, leave the bed for a while.
For chronic insomnia, sleep medicine's first recommendation is CBT-I, a structured therapy usually done with a clinician or a dedicated program. The 3 AM mode borrows single techniques from that work. It is not CBT-I. It is for the night you are in.
How a night ends
Every track fades to silence instead of ending. If you play a background sound with a track, you can set it to fade out after 10 or 20 minutes, or keep playing. No notification asks you to keep a streak. If you fall asleep before the end, the track did its job.
What it won't do
- It won't open the subscription screen or ask for a rating on its own between 1 and 5 AM or on 3 AM content.
- It isn't a treatment for insomnia. If you wake most nights and it has gone on for months, ask a doctor about CBT-I.
- If you wake in a panic, the panic flow is free and one tap away.
What's free
The 3 AM mode is free for everyone, and so is every track with "3am" in its name: Awake at 3am, The 3am Mind and the Sound Bath piece 3 AM Room. The other six night tracks are part of Premium.
- Free, forever
- The panic flow · The 3 AM mode and the 3 AM tracks · The breathing Shapes · Your journal · After the Wave, from the Sound Bath shelf
- Premium
- $3.33 a month, billed $39.90 a year, or $6.99 month to month. Free trial on the yearly plan in the App Store. Cancel anytime. Adds: Every program, including the full 8-week MBSR course · The sleep library and the Sound Bath shelf · The deeper insights.
- Where it runs
- iPhone today. Android is planned.
FAQ
Is Stillee's 3 AM mode free?
Yes. The 3 AM mode and every track with "3am" in its name are free. The other six night tracks are part of Premium.
Does the 3 AM mode show the time?
No. There is no clock on the screen, because watching a clock while trying to sleep has been shown to raise worry and delay sleep.
Will the end of a track wake me up?
It shouldn't. Every track fades to silence instead of ending.
What if I've been lying awake for a long time?
"Out of Bed" and "If You're Still Awake" are built for that, on stimulus control: if sleep isn't coming, leave the bed for a while. Both are part of Premium.
Is it a treatment for insomnia?
No. Stillee is not therapy or a medical device. For chronic insomnia, guidelines recommend CBT-I first.
References
- [1] Tang NK, Schmidt DA, Harvey AG. Sleeping with the enemy: clock monitoring in the maintenance of insomnia. J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry 2007;38(1):40-55. Link
- [2] Balban MY et al. Brief structured respiration practices enhance mood and reduce physiological arousal. Cell Reports Medicine 2023. Link
- [3] Jansson-Fröjmark M et al. Paradoxical intention for insomnia: a systematic review and meta-analysis. J Sleep Res 2022. Link
- [4] Edinger JD et al. Behavioral and psychological treatments for chronic insomnia disorder in adults: an AASM clinical practice guideline. J Clin Sleep Med 2021. Link
- [5] Qaseem A et al. Management of chronic insomnia disorder in adults: a clinical practice guideline from the American College of Physicians. Ann Intern Med 2016. Link