Your mind won't stop. That's exactly what we work with.
Drift plays one word at a time. You picture it. Your brain lets go. Sleep follows.
Clinically tested at Simon Fraser University · Based on peer-reviewed sleep research
You're not an insomniac. Your brain just doesn't know how to stop.
That loop of thoughts at midnight — replaying conversations, running through tomorrow's list, worrying about nothing in particular — isn't a disorder. It's your brain doing exactly what it was built to do.
It's still working.
The problem isn't that your brain is broken. It's that nothing has told it to stop.
One word. One image. Nothing connects. That's the point.
Drift reads you a word. Lighthouse. You picture it for a moment. Then another word arrives. Hammock.
You picture that. Then another. None of them are related. None of them lead anywhere. That's not a bug — it's the whole mechanism.
Your brain can't build a worry spiral out of disconnected images. It can't make a to-do list out of lighthouse, hammock, pineapple. It just follows. And somewhere in the following, sleep arrives.
This technique is called Serial Diverse Imagining. It was developed by researchers at Simon Fraser University to give the brain something gentle to do — gentle enough to occupy it, meaningless enough to let it drift.
"A racing mind, worries, and uncontrollable thoughts are common bedtime complaints. The Serial Diverse Imagining task diverts attention away from sleep-interfering thoughts."
The research is real. The effect is real.
It was tested against standard sleep therapy.
In a clinical study, Serial Diverse Imagining was as effective as Structured Problem-Solving — the gold-standard cognitive treatment for pre-sleep arousal. The difference: standard therapy has to be done 15 minutes before bed. Drift is done in bed, in the dark, while you're already trying to sleep.
It works on the right problem.
Pre-sleep cognitive arousal — the racing mind — is one of the most common reasons people can't fall asleep. Drift targets it directly by shifting attention away from goal-directed thought, which is the specific type of thinking that keeps you awake.
The improvement is significant.
Participants in sleep research showed large effect sizes across sleep quality, sleep effort, and pre-sleep arousal — even in conditions where other factors (like academic stress) were working against them.
Three steps. No effort.
- Open Drift. Choose your session length and a background sound if you want one. Or don't — the words work on their own.
- Close your eyes. A word appears. Picture it clearly for a moment. It doesn't matter if the image is vivid or blurry — just let your mind go to it.
- Let the next word arrive. Another word. Another image. You're not trying to sleep. You're just following. Sleep will follow you.
Built for the moment you need it most.
Background sounds
Rain. Forest. Waves. Fire. Wind. Birds. Layer them with the words, or use them alone. Designed to fill silence without demanding attention.
Session length
60 seconds to a full night. Set it and forget it — Drift stops when you tell it to.
Personalized
Tell us your name and we'll greet you each night. A small thing. It matters more than you'd think. How we use your name
No ads. No notifications. No feed.
Drift is not a platform. It's a tool you use and put down. That's by design.
The questions we get
- "I've tried meditation apps. They don't work for me."
- Drift isn't meditation. You're not trying to clear your mind — you're filling it with something harmless. That's a meaningful difference for people who can't meditate their way to sleep.
- "What if I can't picture things vividly?"
- You don't need to. A vague impression of the word is enough. The point isn't visualization quality — it's redirecting attention away from structured thought.
- "What if I wake up in the night?"
- Start a new session. The technique works whenever your brain is in that restless, semi-active state. It's not only for the initial sleep onset.
- "Is this just a white noise app?"
- The ambient sounds are optional. The words are the core. White noise occupies your ears; Drift occupies the part of your brain that's keeping you awake.
Your brain needs a gentle off-switch. This is it.
Free to download. No account required. No sleep journal to maintain, no breathing exercises to remember, no content library to browse. Just words, one at a time, until you're gone.
Based on sleep science from Simon Fraser University and MacEwan University.