How Stillee works
Falling asleep: what Stillee does at bedtime
Stillee's Sleep tab is built for bedtime. It is always dark, it offers one pick for tonight, and it sorts everything else by what is keeping you up: a day you haven't put down, a mind that won't stop, or a body that needs to settle. Every track fades to silence instead of ending. If you wake in the night instead, that is a different problem with its own page, the 3 AM mode.
What you see when you open the Sleep tab
The Sleep tab is dark at every hour. At the top is Tonight's pick, one tap from playing. It is chosen from the answers you gave in setup, such as how you sleep and what gets in the way, and from the hour. The choosing is done before you reach for the phone. You can ignore it and go to a shelf.
Three shelves for three kinds of bedtime
Bedtime is not one state, so the tab has more than one shelf.
- Wind down for tonight. An hour or two before bed, for setting up the night. Evening practices, such as Put Tomorrow Down and Closing the Day.
- Quiet the mind. For being wired but tired: the body's ready, the brain isn't. The Thoughts at Bedtime and Cognitive Shuffle for Bedtime.
- Fall into sleep. Lights off, eyes closed, for the body to settle and the mind to drift. Bedtime Body Melt and Deep Sleep Induction.
The middle-of-the-night tracks sit on a separate shelf, "Back to sleep", so nothing for 3 AM turns up at 10 PM.
When your mind won't stop
Three tracks are made for thoughts, not for relaxing.
| Track | Length | Technique | Use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Put Tomorrow Down | 5 min | Constructive worry: sit up, list what is on your mind for tomorrow, and write the next small step beside each | Evening, hours before bed |
| The Thoughts at Bedtime | 8 min | ACT cognitive defusion: name each thought as a thought and let it pass | In bed |
| Cognitive Shuffle for Bedtime | 8 min | A slow stream of unrelated images the mind can't turn into a story | In bed |
Why these? "Try to relax" gives a racing mind another task. In a study of 21 people recording their thoughts as they tried to sleep, thinking about sleep and its consequences, and general problem-solving, best predicted how long sleep took. [1] So each track gives the mind a job, or a place to put the job.
What the research shows, and where it stops:
- Constructive worry. In 33 undergraduates reporting insomnia, five nights of writing worries with possible solutions lowered pre-sleep mental arousal compared with recording worries alone. [2] In a sleep lab, 57 healthy young adults who wrote a five-minute to-do list fell asleep faster than those who wrote about what they had done. [3] The first measured arousal, not sleep. The second was one night, in healthy adults. Put Tomorrow Down moves the method earlier in the evening.
- Imagery. In 41 people with insomnia, brief training in an engaging imagery task shortened the time to fall asleep and reduced pre-sleep mental activity against no instructions, on one night. Plain distraction did not. [4] Cognitive Shuffle for Bedtime is built on that kind of imagery.
- Defusion. A 2026 meta-analysis found ACT-based treatment for insomnia improved symptoms against waitlist or standard controls, with no significant difference from CBT-I. Its authors still call CBT-I the gold standard. [5] Those trials tested a full therapy, not an eight-minute track.
How a night ends
Every track fades to silence instead of ending. No chime, no goodbye. The voice goes quiet first, then the sound underneath, over the last minute or two.
Each track can play over a sound bed, picked for that track, with some beds kept off tracks they don't suit. You can set the sound to fade out after 10 or 20 minutes, or let it keep playing.
Nothing in the app asks you to stay: no 11 PM badges, no "your streak is at risk" notifications. While a session is playing, it doesn't open the subscription screen or ask for a rating.
The guide is one synthetic voice, generated with text to speech from scripts we write. We say so because it is the first thing you hear in the dark.
Sounds on their own, up to three at once
The sounds under the tracks are also on the Sleep tab on their own, under "Sounds on the shelf". Tap one to light it. Light up to three and they play together, such as rain with a fire. "All sounds" opens the whole library, sorted by what each one sounds like: rain, water, woods, wind and fire, bells and chant, deep and still, and a few brighter ones kept for the day.
The row follows what you play most. Today offers a sound for the day and one for the evening. A lit sound goes out when you start a track, a breathing exercise or Sound Bath.
Other ways in
Some nights call for a breath, not a track. The sleep breathing exercise offers "before bed", and the screen dims over the first seven minutes. See Breathing. For no voice at all, there is Sound Bath: recorded instruments, no narration.
What it won't do
- It isn't a treatment for insomnia. For chronic insomnia, guidelines recommend CBT-I first, a structured therapy usually run by a clinician or a dedicated program. The bedtime tracks borrow single techniques from it. They are not CBT-I.
- It promises no time to sleep. The techniques have trials behind them.
- If sleeplessness has lasted months, or comes with panic, talk to a doctor. Stillee is not therapy, a diagnosis, a medical device or a crisis service.
What's free
Three sleep sounds are free to try: Soft rain, Night Rain and Drift. So are the breathing exercises, including the one for bed. The other sounds and the guided bedtime tracks are part of Premium, including the three tracks above. The two free night tracks, Awake at 3am and The 3am Mind, are for the middle of the night.
- 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 bedtime content free?
Partly. Three sleep sounds (Soft rain, Night Rain and Drift) and the breathing exercises are free. The other sounds and the guided bedtime tracks, such as Put Tomorrow Down, The Thoughts at Bedtime and Cognitive Shuffle for Bedtime, are part of Premium. The two free night tracks are for waking in the night.
What does Stillee do for a mind that won't stop at bedtime?
It gives you three tracks built for thoughts: Put Tomorrow Down, an evening writing practice, then The Thoughts at Bedtime and Cognitive Shuffle for Bedtime for when you are in bed. They sit on the "Quiet the mind" shelf and the "Wind down for tonight" shelf.
Will a track wake me when it ends?
It shouldn't. Every track fades to silence instead of ending, over the last minute or two, with no chime and no goodbye. If you play a sound under it, you can set that to fade out after 10 or 20 minutes, or leave it playing.
Can Stillee cure my insomnia?
No. Stillee is a companion, not a treatment. The tracks use techniques studied in trials. For insomnia that lasts, guidelines recommend CBT-I first, and a doctor can point you to it.
References
- [1] Wicklow A, Espie CA. Intrusive thoughts and their relationship to actigraphic measurement of sleep: towards a cognitive model of insomnia. Behav Res Ther 2000;38(7):679-693. (21 participants, three nights) Link
- [2] Carney CE, Waters WF. Effects of a structured problem-solving procedure on pre-sleep cognitive arousal in college students with insomnia. Behav Sleep Med 2006;4(1):13-28. Link
- [3] Scullin MK, Krueger ML, Ballard HK, Pruett N, Bliwise DL. The effects of bedtime writing on difficulty falling asleep: a polysomnographic study comparing to-do lists and completed activity lists. J Exp Psychol Gen 2018;147(1):139-146. Link
- [4] Harvey AG, Payne S. The management of unwanted pre-sleep thoughts in insomnia: distraction with imagery versus general distraction. Behav Res Ther 2002;40(3):267-277. Link
- [5] Barroso D et al. Acceptance and commitment therapy for insomnia: an updated meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. J Clin Sleep Med 2026;22(1):132. Link
- [6] 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
- [7] 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