RestStack · iPhone & Android · Coming soon
RestStack gives your evening its own sunset, timed to your bedtime. Six small steps stack into a horizon, the screen warms and dims with every hour, and each night you keep becomes a star. It forgives the night you miss, and it never gives your sleep a grade.
Prefer paper? The free sleep routine checklist (PDF)
The app is on its way to iPhone and Android.
TonightBed at 11pm
Night 12 · twelve stars, no score
The first night starts the moment you set your bedtime — no account, no paywall in the way. You can try it in your browser tonight.
Tell RestStack when you go to bed and when you get up. Four hours before bed your evening opens. Three hours before, your own sunset: from then on the screen drops all blue, gets dimmer every hour and sets its text larger, so it stays easy to read in low light.
Daylight, a last coffee, lights down, a warm shower, tomorrow’s list and the phone outside the room, each timed from your bedtime with its reason in one line. Hold a step for a second to stack it, and a layer of the horizon rises on your screen. A late coffee or a hard workout re-plans the rest of the evening.
In the morning RestStack asks about the routine, never about your sleep: any step you didn’t tap, and roughly when you got into bed. Every night you keep becomes a star on a spiral of 66. Miss one and you can cover it with a cloud; nothing is taken away.
RestStack’s evening uses six of these: morning light, the caffeine cut-off, lights down, a warm shower, tomorrow’s list and the phone outside the bedroom, all timed from the bedtime and wake time in the first row. The rest are here so you can judge them yourself. Strong means large studies and official advice agree; weak means it might help you and the research has not shown it.
| Habit | When | Evidence | Why it is on the list |
|---|---|---|---|
| Same wake time and bedtime | Every day, weekends too | Strong | In a UK study of 60,977 adults, sleep regularity predicted long-term health better than sleep length did. |
| Caffeine cut-off | About 9 hours before bed | Strong | Across 24 studies, caffeine cut total sleep by 45 minutes on average — far more than the 9 extra minutes it took to fall asleep. |
| Alcohol cut-off | About 6 hours before bed | Strong | From around two drinks, alcohol delays and shortens REM sleep. |
| Warm shower or bath | 1–2 hours before bed | Moderate | Warming up lets your core cool down at bedtime; people fell asleep about 10 minutes sooner. |
| Dark bedroom | All night | Moderate | Room light during sleep hours suppressed melatonin by more than half in a lab study. |
| Cool bedroom | All night | Moderate | Cooler than the day — around 18 °C / 65 °F suits many people, give or take a few degrees. |
| Lights down | From 3 hours before bed | Moderate | Ordinary room light in the hours before bed shortened the night’s melatonin by about 90 minutes in a lab study. |
| Phone outside the bedroom | The last 30 minutes | Mixed | The strongest evidence is about the time screens take, not their light. |
| Tomorrow’s list, on paper | The last hour | Moderate | In one small sleep-lab trial, writing a to-do list meant falling asleep about 9 minutes faster. |
| Slow breathing or a stretch | The last 15 minutes | Moderate | Relaxation is an established part of sleep advice; five minutes is enough to make it a step. |
| Morning light | In the first hours after waking | Moderate | Daylight early on sets the body clock, so bedtime arrives on time. |
| Move today | Any time, not hard in the last hour | Moderate | Evening exercise did not harm sleep in a 23-study review — only very hard sessions right before bed might. |
| Short, early naps | Under an hour, before mid-afternoon | Moderate | Long or late naps spend the sleep pressure you need tonight. |
| Last big meal | 2–3 hours before bed | Weak–moderate | Eating in the last hour before bed went with more waking in the night. |
| Read on paper | The last 30 minutes | Weak | A wind-down that is not another screen. The melatonin evidence is thin. |
| Magnesium | Optional | Weak | Small, mixed studies. Never a RestStack step — ask a pharmacist if you take medication. |
Not on the list: mouth tape. A 2025 systematic review rated every study it found as poor quality and flagged real risk for anyone who cannot breathe freely through the nose. It is not for everyone, and it is not something we suggest.
Light in the evening holds back melatonin. Sleep researchers now recommend keeping the light at your eyes low for the three hours before bed (Brown et al., PLOS Biology, 2022), and a phone is a bright light held close to your face.
So RestStack’s own screen follows your evening. From three hours before bed it drops all blue and dims each hour, until in the last hour its colours give off roughly 2% of the light of its daytime ones.
A warmer screen is not enough on its own: in a study of Night Shift, the colour change by itself did not improve sleep (Duraccio et al., Sleep Health, 2021). That is why the last step of every evening is putting the phone outside the room.
A sleep score grades a night you can no longer change. For some people the number becomes the problem: sleep specialists have a name — orthosomnia — for the anxiety of chasing a perfect one.
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s advice to tracker users is to focus on “consistent bedtimes and wake times”, to “make small adjustments to your routine to see what helps”, and to “check your sleep data in the morning only, not during the night, and avoid obsessing over nightly results” (AASM, February 2026).
That is the whole app. RestStack counts what you did — the nights you ran your routine — and leaves the night itself alone.
You have read the advice and bought the eye mask. What you have not managed is doing it on night four. RestStack exists for night four.
RestStack never tells you an earlier bedtime is better. A steady one is what the evidence rewards, so set the times you can actually keep.
Everything works on the phone alone. RestStack never measures your sleep, so there is nothing to wear and nothing to charge.
RestStack is a habit app, not a medical device, and it does not diagnose or treat sleep problems. See a doctor if changing your habits has not helped, if you have had trouble sleeping for months, or if it is making daily life hard to cope with (NHS) — and straight away if anyone has noticed you stop breathing in your sleep.
Your evening and its six steps, the re-plans when something comes up, the morning check-in and your sky of stars. Everything the routine needs to run every night.
Anything paid will sit around the routine, never inside it. The price will be on the store page at launch.
No. It does not measure your sleep, record snoring or give your night a score. It keeps track of what you did in the evening, and in the morning it asks about the routine — never about how you slept.
It is being built now, for iPhone and Android together, and this page will carry the App Store and Google Play buttons the day it is downloadable. You do not have to wait: RestStack Tonight runs the same evening in your browser, and the free printable checklist does the job on paper.
Neither. The routine runs on your phone alone, with no sign-up, and your nights stay on your device. The browser version keeps them in that browser and sends nothing anywhere.
The routine will run free every night, for good: the six steps, the evening that dims with the hour, the morning check-in and your sky of stars. Any optional extras will be priced on the store page at launch.
Tonight’s six steps, each timed from your bedtime. Each one you stack raises a layer of the horizon on your screen. The stack ends when you get into bed — the opposite of “bedtime stacking”, the 2026 trend of doing everything in bed, which sleep doctors warn weakens the link between bed and sleep.
Evening light holds back melatonin, and sleep researchers recommend keeping the light around you low for the three hours before bed. So from three hours before your bedtime RestStack drops all blue and gets dimmer each hour. A warmer screen alone does not fix sleep, though, which is why the last step is putting the phone outside the room.
Nothing is taken away. In the morning RestStack asks what happened: if you did it and just didn’t tap, it counts; you can cover the night with a cloud and keep your streak; or you can say it didn’t happen, and it lays out the next three days with you. One missed night does not undo a habit.
Neither is a RestStack step. Magnesium is on the evidence list as weak: the studies are small and mixed, and anyone on medication should ask a pharmacist first. Mouth tape is not on the list at all — a 2025 review found every study poor-quality and some real risk.
No, and nothing here claims to. A steady routine helps many people keep a calmer evening. If you have had trouble sleeping for months, if changing your habits has not helped, or if it is making daily life hard to cope with, see a doctor — the treatment recommended first for long-term insomnia is a structured programme called CBT-I.
A short check-in: last night’s steps as small pictures, a question about any step you didn’t tap, roughly when you got into bed, and one sentence about your evening. Then today, planned back from tonight’s bedtime. Nothing out of 100, ever.
Fix your wake time, pick three habits, time them back from bedtime and count the nights you keep. The order that works, and why routines die by night three.
A bedtime routine for adults starts an hour before bed. What to do at 90, 60, 45, 30 and 15 minutes out, what to leave out, and what to do if sleep won't come.
About 9 hours before bed for one regular coffee, 13 for a big dose. The 2023 meta-analysis numbers, a table by bedtime, and why 2pm only suits an 11pm bed.
A free printable sleep routine checklist — no email, no sign-up. Habits graded by evidence, a time next to each, and 14 nights to tick off. Print it tonight.
You do not need the app to begin. Set your bedtime in the browser and tonight’s evening starts, or print the checklist and tick the first step on paper.
Run your evening in the browser
Or download the free sleep routine checklist (PDF)
The app is on its way to iPhone and Android.
