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Apple has been vocal about health by making it a cornerstone of its products.
It’s not just about empowerment. A recent report showcasing a snapshot of Apple’s different products touching and their health-related features shows that the long-term goal is to make Apple an intelligent guardian who’s there to help you stay healthy and live an active lifestyle.
The Apple Watch is a big part of this plan and is doing an excellent job tracking our daily activities. But, how good is it at tracking your sleep?
The Apple Watch can track your sleep using built-in sensors, including an accelerometer and heart rate monitor. Tracking your movements throughout the night can tell whether you’re in light sleep, deep sleep, or REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. The Watch uses these data points to determine how many hours of quality sleep you get each night. You can track your sleeping trends for up to 14 days and receive a sleep score every morning.
Let’s examine how you can track sleep using the Apple Watch. We will also look at other apps on Apple devices and how they can help you track your sleep.
Importance of Tracking Sleep on the Apple Watch
Are you struggling with sleep? It is essential to monitor your sleep to adapt to a specific sleep cycle, improving your overall health.
Quality sleep has a lot of benefits, such as:
- Allowing your body to revitalize, making you more productive
- Keeping diseases like hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and more, at bay as they help maintain a healthy heart and blood vessels.
- Improving your mental state, causing your brain to function well
Overall, good sleep can’t be traded. It is paramount in your daily life, from your emotional well-being and productivity to your general health.
Unlike in the past when you would track your sleep with apps on your smartphone, you can now track using only the Apple Watch, keeping things extra efficient.
Tracking Your Sleep with the Apple Watch
The Apple Company has been at the forefront of innovating devices that make your daily life more comfortable. You can now master your sleeping routine by wearing an Apple Watch. In return, it will relay results through the apps to your iPhone for viewing and tracking.
The previous Apple Watch versions used external apps to track your sleep. However, Apple has introduced watches with built-in sleep trackers, such as watchOS 7 and watchOS 9, to enable you to track your sleep cycle with an iPhone 6S and other newer versions using iOS 14 and above.
Through your Apple Watch, you will monitor various stages of your sleep, like rapid eye movement (REM), light sleep and core sleep, and the total time you are awake.
In addition, it allows you to set a variety of customized schedules capturing the following information:
- Sleeping duration
- Sleep and wake-up time
- A wake-up ringtone
- The “no disturbance” set time to prevent you from distractions before sleeping and during sleep
- Sleep tracking
To get started, you must set up a sleep plan on your iPhone or Apple Watch. Check the procedure below.
How Do You Set a Sleep Schedule on the Apple Watch?
It is now super easy now to understand your sleeping patterns with the help of the sleep app on the Apple Watch by setting up your sleep targets. The app will update you on your sleep trends for up to 14 days. If there are changes in the Apple watch settings, they will display on your iPhone.
- Start by opening your Apple Watch.
- Navigate to the Sleep App and tap on it.
- Press on the Full Schedule button that will display on the screen.
- Tap on the Sleep Schedule button with a green icon to turn it on.
- Navigate to the Set Your First Schedule button and tap on it.
- Click on the first option that pops up, which is Every Day, but if you want to exclude some days, you can uncheck them after.
- Tap on the Wake-up Time to set the alarm.
- Customize the clock by rotating the digital crown, then tap the green button at the bottom right to set the time.
- After enabling the alarm, you can choose the alarm sounds, vibration mode, volume, and haptics.
- Navigate down to Bedtime and set a time after considering your sleep goal. You can always make adjustments via the back button.
What Additional Sleep Options Does the Apple Watch Offer?
Aside from setting the sleeping pattern on the Watch, you can explore other alternatives through its settings. For instance, the Apple Watch allows you to adjust your iPhone through the app by tapping on My Watch > Sleep. Here is a quick guideline on how to do that:
- Click on the set goal and set the sleeping time duration.
- Activate the sleep tracker to assist you in measuring your sleep goals and achievements. Consequently, sleep tracking allows your Watch to transfer sleep data to the Health app on your iPhone.
- Tapping on the alarm allows you to tailor the sound effects. Switch it on or off and set the sound by clicking on the sound and haptics. However, if your watch is in mute mode, it will tap your wrist without making any sound.
- You can now activate the Wind-down option to avoid distractions during sleep through the Apple Watch’s sleep focus feature. All you need to do is instantly turn it on.
Other exceptional features are the sleep screen, which dims the Watch’s display and locks your iPhone, and the Do Not Disturb feature.
By browsing the Sleep app, you can tell whether you have achieved your sleep targets.
Apple Watch also allows viewing your sleep stats for up to 14 days, including respiratory data. Do this by going to Browse, tapping on the Respiratory button, then the Respiratory Rate, and lastly, clicking on Show More Respiratory Data for details.
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3 Quick Steps to View Your Sleep Tracking Data
Through your iPhone, you get a detailed report on your sleep cycle, including the heart and respiratory rates. Use these three steps to view it.
- On your iPhone, open the Health app.
- Click on the Browse button.
- Tap on the Sleep option.
- For a comprehensive report, click on Show More Sleep Data.
Where to Buy the Latest Apple Watch
The Apple Watch Series 8 is available for purchase on Amazon here.
- Advanced new features including Crash and Fall Detection.
- Track your health with an ECG, heart rate monitor, and SpO2 sensor.
- Sweatproof and resistant to dust with IP6X certification.
- Up to 18 hours of battery life or 36 hours via low power mode.
![Apple Watch Series 8 [GPS 41mm] Smart Watch](https://history-computer.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/317o8cxuiAL._SL500_.webp)
Sleep Tracking Apps on the Apple Watch
Apple has made a milestone in improving the Apple Watch’s tracking capabilities to ensure you experience seamless sleep tracking with minimal disturbances.
In the 2020 release, the Apple watchOS 7 came with additional features that enable it to track sleep without requiring an extra app. It consists of a built-in sleep app, a sleep screen mode, dim displays, and viewing of sleep data.
However, the actual information you can view using your Apple Watch is limited to 14-day data. It does display the sleeping time and a heart rate range. As a result, there is still a need for a third-party app to get a more in-depth report than Apple’s native built-in app.
Let’s dive into various sleep apps for the Apple Watch!
AutoSleep
Are you looking for an in-depth sleep-tracking app to monitor your sleeping cycle? AutoSleep is the most popular app that offers just that for the quality of your sleep in all three stages: REM, light sleep, and deep sleep.
The app uses four rings to track the essential parameters, with the primary interface displaying your sleep overview, including the time you slept, deep sleep, the quality of your sleep, and heart rate. However, the interfaces can be confusing if you get into the extensive data.
It offers tons of information to help you make good decisions regarding your sleep routine. It allows you to modify your sleep goals and provides trend tips, including comparing your active and inactive heart rates.
However, the AutoSleep app is compatible with the Apple Watch. It is simple to navigate and lets you view your daily sleep track details. In addition, it offers an estimated projection of how prepared you are for the day, depending on your sleep report.
At a one-time buying cost of $4.99, you can get yourself the AutoSleep app.
Sleep++
Unlike the AutoSleep app, which can offer daily reports on your sleep tracking, the Sleep ++ app provides information after a couple of days. The app comprises automatic sleep detection, sleep goals, reminders, and more.
The app offers a comprehensive sleep report indicating the best sleep time, patterns, phases, and habits.
The incredible thing about this app is that it is free. But, to get the ad-free version, you have to pay $1.99.
Pillow
Do you want an app that can record audio scenes while asleep? These include sleep apnea, sleep talking, and snoring. The Pillow app, however, has the downside of recording only in manual mode.
The intelligent alarm with the pillow app eliminates disturbances, allowing you to set more gentle vibrations on your wrist than the sound alarms. Also, it can sense your current sleep phase, thus taking appropriate action. For example, it won’t awaken you when in a deep sleep phase.
Pillow enables you to retrieve your immediate previous sleep data from the Health app despite the app used. Nevertheless, upgrading to a premium package would be best to view your complete sleep history.
The Pillow app analyzes the different stages of your sleep cycle and gives you a quality score for your sleep.
You can download the app for free or purchase all its features for $39.99 USD annually.
NapBot App
The app offers a detailed report analysis of your sleeping phases by calculating the light and deep phases depending on the data collected.
It offers a report of environmental sounds and formulates information on their impact on the quality of your sleep.
You can get the app in a free version, which is restricted, but the Pro version has all the benefits, including sleep trends and history, at a fee of $1.00 per month or an annual fee of $9.99.
Final Thoughts
You might often be tired, experience insomnia, or can’t stay productive during the day. Most of these signs indicate a lack of sufficient sleep in your life. With the help of Apple Watch devices now tracking your sleeping patterns, embracing a regular cycle to help improve your health and productivity levels is possible.
