Tidal locking between a pair of co-orbiting astronomical bodies occurs when one of the objects reaches a state where there is no longer any net change in its rotation rate over the course of a complete orbit. In the case where a tidally locked body possesses synchronous rotation, the object takes just as long to rotate around its own axis as it does to revolve around its partner. For example, the same side of the Moon always faces Earth, although there is some variability because the Moon's orbit is not perfectly circular. Usually, only the satellite is tidally locked to the larger body. However, if both the difference in mass between the two bodies and the distance between them are relatively small, each may be tidally locked to the other; this is the case for Pluto and Charon, and for Eris and Dysnomia. Alternative names for the tidal locking process are gravitational locking, captured rotation, and spin–orbit locking.

The effect arises between two bodies when their gravitational interaction slows a body's rotation until it becomes tidally locked. Over many millions of years, the interaction forces changes to their orbits and rotation rates as a result of energy exchange and heat dissipation. When one of the bodies reaches a state where there is no longer any net change in its rotation rate over the course of a complete orbit, it is said to be tidally locked. The object tends to stay in this state because leaving it would require adding energy back into the system. The object's orbit may migrate over time so as to undo the tidal lock, for example, if a giant planet perturbs the object.

There is ambiguity in the use of the terms 'tidally locked' and 'tidal locking', in that some scientific sources use it to refer exclusively to 1:1 synchronous rotation (e.g. the Moon), while others include non-synchronous orbital resonances in which there is no further transfer of angular momentum over the course of one orbit (e.g. Mercury). In Mercury's case, the planet completes three rotations for every two revolutions around the Sun, a 3:2 spin–orbit resonance. In the special case where an orbit is nearly circular and the body's rotation axis is not significantly tilted, such as the Moon, tidal locking results in the same hemisphere of the revolving object constantly facing its partner. Regardless of which definition of tidal locking is used, the hemisphere that is visible changes slightly due to variations in the locked body's orbital velocity and the inclination of its rotation axis over time.

Consider a pair of co-orbiting objects, A and B. The change in rotation rate necessary to tidally lock body B to the larger body A is caused by the torque applied by A's gravity on bulges it has induced on B by tidal forces.

The gravitational force from object A upon B will vary with distance, being greatest at the nearest surface to A and least at the most distant. This creates a gravitational gradient across object B that will distort its equilibrium shape slightly. The body of object B will become elongated along the axis oriented toward A, and conversely, slightly reduced in dimension in directions orthogonal to this axis. The elongated distortions are known as tidal bulges. (For the solid Earth, these bulges can reach displacements of up to around 0.4 m or 1 ft 4 in.) When B is not yet tidally locked, the bulges travel over its surface due to orbital motions, with one of the two "high" tidal bulges traveling close to the point where body A is overhead. For large astronomical bodies that are nearly spherical due to self-gravitation, the tidal distortion produces a slightly prolate spheroid, i.e. an axially symmetric ellipsoid that is elongated along its major axis. Smaller bodies also experience distortion, but this distortion is less regular.

The material of B exerts resistance to this periodic reshaping caused by the tidal force. In effect, some time is required to reshape B to the gravitational equilibrium shape, by which time the forming bulges have already been carried some distance away from the A–B axis by B's rotation. Seen from a vantage point in space, the points of maximum bulge extension are displaced from the axis oriented toward A. If B's rotation period is shorter than its orbital period, the bulges are carried forward of the axis oriented toward A in the direction of rotation, whereas if B's rotation period is longer, the bulges instead lag behind.

Because the bulges are now displaced from the A–B axis, A's gravitational pull on the mass in them exerts a torque on B. The torque on the A-facing bulge acts to bring B's rotation in line with its orbital period, whereas the "back" bulge, which faces away from A, acts in the opposite sense. However, the bulge on the A-facing side is closer to A than the back bulge by a distance of approximately B's diameter, and so experiences a slightly stronger gravitational force and torque. The net resulting torque from both bulges, then, is always in the direction that acts to synchronize B's rotation with its orbital period, leading eventually to tidal locking.

The angular momentum of the whole A–B system is conserved in this process, so that when B slows down and loses rotational angular momentum, its orbital angular momentum is boosted by a similar amount (there are also some smaller effects on A's rotation). This results in a raising of B's orbit about A in tandem with its rotational slowdown. For the other case where B starts off rotating too slowly, tidal locking both speeds up its rotation, and lowers its orbit.