Anyone using Sleep Tracking Apps and/or Devices

According to Author “Shawn Stevenson” sleep is more important than diet and exercise combined in his book Sleep Smarter: 21 Essential Strategies to Sleep Your Way to A Better Body, Better Health, and Bigger Success

[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019G14UQI/?coliid=IAWDZ3K9JEEFF&colid=3BUPR0DN6LDU3&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it](http://Sleep Smarter)

I was wonder what type of apps people are using for both monitoring sleep cycles and tracking them and if the devices such as Apple Watch, Fitbit, and other gadgets can accurately track your sleep state.

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Apple Watch with Pillow.

I tried:
Pillow
Sleep++
Autosleep
and I’m sure a few others I dismissed rather quickly.

Actually measuring sleep is very hard to do with just movement and heart rate, and assessing how accurate measurements like this are is also very hard. Without some good external reference, it’s difficult to know which app is more accurate. Now, we don’t always know when we are awake, and we might forget when we were awake. But it is unlikely that we would think we would falsely identify being awake (as in, if I think I was awake last night to go to the bathroom, odds are I really was). I decided that, in the absence of an external reference, the best indicator of accuracy is which application identified moments of wakefulness that I was also aware of most often since that was really the most reliable indicator I had. If I knew I was awake for some period of time, and the app failed to detect that, I had doubts about its accuracy. (apps may fail to detect moments of wakefulness I am not aware of, or detect wakefulness where there is none but I can’t be sure I wasn’t actually awake and just forget, but there’s nothing I can do about that!).

I also considered, much more subjectively, how well the representation of my sleep mapped on to my experience, but this was really down-weighted compared to detection of moments of known-wakefulness.

Having tried these all out simultaneously, I found Pillow tended to detect times of being awake better than any others. The other apps tended to miss times of wakefulness. Pillow did have the disadvantage (at first) of requiring me to tell it when I was going to sleep, but that wasn’t a big deal, I rarely forgot (and I have a special “Sleep” watch face with the complication right there). Pillow has since added auto-sleep detection so that’s not even a factor any more.

I never use the Pillow alarm or its sound recording. I just use the Sleep Cycles tracking (I use the built in Apple Watch alarm for waking up).

Your milage may vary, I’d suggest trying out at least the apps I listed above, since the total cost for the whole set would bet about $5. You can run them all simultaneously so you can compare results for all three apps on the same night, eliminating any between-night variation that would make between-app comparisons tough.

For the record, Autosleep is very well-loved, though its interface is a disaster of information overload.

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Not exactly what you’re looking for but my cpap machine tracks things well. I can pull the machine data into the SleepyHead app on my Mac to see how I’m doing.

I use Sleep++ and find it’s accurate for me, the automatic sleep tracking is awesome and I’ve found that on days when I’ve been horrifically jetlagged and napped in odd bursts throughout it has still tracked it so I’m sticking with it (I was testing multiple apps at the same time when one of those days happened and for some reason the others just missed everything during the day).

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I use my fitbit to track my sleep, I find that it is good enough, though it tends to not pickup my exact wake up time as I tend to iPad in bed for a bit before really starting my day

I’m using SleepCycle. You can use it with or without the Apple Watch. I like the output graphs in particular.
I’d like them even more if I could figure out how to link them to DayOne. Funnily enough I emailed the support team that question just a few hours ago.Will post back if they have a solution, otherwise if anyone else has any thoughts I’d be grateful :slight_smile:

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I use sleepcycle as well on my iPhone only.
I mainly use it to watch trends. It connects to the Health app. So I can use health or sleep cycle for analysis. I love the sleep aid sound. Works fine for me for over 1.100 nights.

I’am using Slepp++ and Autosleep. Preferring Autosleep, because i can export the data (the app stores only the last 12 weeks). So i can compare sleep duration with other factors. Next in this house: the new Eve Room (expansive, but i have a giftcard :slight_smile: ) - sensor to compare with Humidity and Temperature.

Accuracy looks good to me, a “good” indicator for my bad sleep is “times woken”.

Sleep cycle for me. Have been using it for years and it’s great.

I love that it:

  • uses the microphone so that the phone can stay on the bedside table
  • shows me the weather when I wake up
  • gradually increases the sound volume
  • displays funny stats for lots of things (who would have known that British people stay in bed the longest?)
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I have a Withings Activité Pop on my wrist. It synchronize it with the Withings Health app, which links also to Apple Health. I don’t know how accurate is it, but I always take the result with a grain of salt and compare it with my feeling of the night.

I prefer to look at the ratio deep vs light sleep length, and also if periods of deep / light sleep are in big chunks or often broken small chunks.

An advantage of the Withings Activité, is the battery last 6 months, I don’t have to worry of daily charging :wink:

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I’m using AutoSleep with my Apple Watch. I used Pillow way back before Apple Watch was released but dismayed that it used up a lot of storage (mine was 1GB). I got Sleep++ for my Series 0 but switched to AutoSleep because of the auto-detection. I think Sleep++ just recently added auto-detection too.

Right, Slepp++ has now auto-detection.

Wow you guys & girls are great; so much input. Thanks for the response.

I have a condo that I have taken on the project of building a sleep sanctuary. First off, Complete darkness. This is easier said than done. It is amazing how much light come from such things as the power indicator lights in power strips. So I took those all apart and disconnected the lamps. (I am an electrical Engineer and work also as an electrician so no issues) plus I just like to take things apart. Tape over the Air Con indicator light. I live in Thailand so no Central Air only split room types.
I completely blacked out the windows. So now the room is pitch black whereas you cannot even see you hand in front of your face. So it is possible to take a nap in the middle of a sunny day in total darkness.

I use a bunch of Philips Hue lights that I can create scenes for sunset and sunrise. Love the Hue bulbs, but Philips app not so much. For people using the Hue bulbs I have foundiConnectHue to be the best IOS app. I usually set a sunset dimming scene with a sunrise wake up scene.

For sound I use Sonos ( I love the Sonos system and bought them years ago) then I subscribe to CALM Radio where you can use ambient sounds like thunderstorms or even white noise if you want.

Last project is Soundproofing where I am building a room within a room.

I will try some of the suggestions. I always figured that I do not think it can be too accurate as would be wiring your body up like they do in sleep studies.

Fortunately, my work is moving more towards task basis without strict time schedules so I can wake up when I am done sleeping. The only downside is that I have to do a lot of business traveling and I miss my sleep sanctuary.

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Another vote for Autosleep on Apple Watch. I set my alarm every night (because my schedule is too irregular to use the schedule option). The data is good enough for my needs and I love the frictionlessness of having everything happen on the Watch. I also set the watch into Theatre and Do Not Disturb when setting the alarm.

Oh, and the alarm works great. It’s never failed me, and wakes me without waking my partner.

auto sleep is my goto… combined with apple watch

i may check out this pillow just to see if its providing similar reading

For the past 5 months I’ve been using Autosleep on an Apple Watch. I agree with an earlier post that the Autosleep data display can be a bit overwhelming. I’ve found that viewing the sleep data through Apple’s Health app has its place.

My Fitbit - Charge 2 - does a good job.

Battery life is good, so there is no problem wearing it all night if I charge it in the car.

The companion app produces reports that give me everything I need.

Oh, that’s nice projects… a total pitch black room you can totally control.

About sleep, I don’t think there is a known very accurate method to measure the quality of sleep. The only non invasive way I heard is to look at the movement of your eyes (which will move a lot during deep sleep). But no device as of today is available (and would be creepy).That’s is why I take all results with a big grain of salt :wink:

I’m using the built in sleep tracker on my Pebble Time until I upgrade to an Apple Watch.

Found this in my news-feed today

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