Apple watch at night –a few tricks

Cool Workflows
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a few tricks on how to use apple watch at night

I use Apple Watch at night to track my sleep using Autosleep, so I wear it while sleeping. Most days it’s enough to charge the watch for 30-40 minutes.

I never heard anyone telling how they use the watch at night, so this is what I do before going to sleep:

I turn on theater mode, so the watch doesn’t light up when I move while sleeping. I do this in control center on the watch.

I switch to my night watch face. I keep the watch face on the right of my day watch face (Siri watch face, lately) and it’s easy to reach with one swipe

My night watch face is the Numerals watch face, set with cocoa color and alarm complication. The numeral watch face is an analog watch and it has a big number for the hour. It’s easy to know what time it is if I wake up night. Normally I don’t care too much to know which minute I am in, so the big number is fast and easy.

The alarm complication is useful, so I can easily make sure if the alarm is on, at what time, and set or change it.

Cocoa color is good, as it’s quite gentle on the eye during the night.

A good trick is to wake up the watch by rotating the digital crown. The brightness doesn’t go immediately to maximum, but the screen lit up gradually, and you can stop when it’s bright enough. That’s also easy on the eyes.

This is my night watch face:
image

p.s. Actually I wasn’t even sure if this should be posted in workflows, as it’s the opposite of a workflow (sleepflow, maybe?)

6 Likes
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I’m going to have to try that night watch face.

My night watch face is Modular with red letters, and the phase of the moon, weather, Drafts, sunrise time and alarm time on it. Of those, I probably only use the time and sunrise time.

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Thanks for the tricks! Just what I needed to start tracking my sleep.

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image

This be mine.

I use the modular watch face, also in theatre. Rose red because red is the color least likely to make your brain wake up in the night. Just recently started using theatre mode, so still forgetting some nights. But overall I find it useful.

Complications from top left to bottom right:

  • Apple Home to control lights, sound etc
  • 24 hour formatted time
  • Autowake with scheduled wake up time. Turned off during the weekend but mon-fri it shows latest wake up time (usually 6:30). When AutoSleep is active it shows a count down timer to wake up time
  • Breathe - I like to finish the day with a 5 mins breathing session (would like to set to higher but can’t)
  • Heartwatch to quickly monitor my heart rate when needed during the night
  • AutoSleep for quick access to the Lights Out function PLUS (when activated) it shows me how long time I’ve slept

m.

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I use the Simple watch face for sleeping, along with the following complications:

  • Weather
  • Battery Level - To make sure I have a reasonable charge before turning in.
  • Sunrise/Sunset
  • Alarm - To make sure an alarm is set + to provide handy access to the Alarms app.

Before calling it a day I turn on Airplane, Do Not Disturb and Theatre mode. I also make good use of the flashlight when navigating dark rooms.

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I’ve been sleeping with the watch for about 6 months using the app Sleep++ and love the insight it gives me. I’ve never thought about having a “sleep” or “night” face but think it’s a great idea. The flashlight seems to come in handy more often than expected with a big benefit of the screen being red rather than white if in theatre mode (you can always swipe for red and grey without going to theatre mode)

Going to try a dedicated sleep face tonight and see if that improves my routine.

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Thanks for the tip on AutoWake @michael! Somehow I missed it after using AutoSleep for over a year.

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Thanks all for the replies, good to know I am not the only one with a different watch face at night.
I much prefer to have it almost empty, so that it’s mainly black. Numerals only has one complication, so it forces me to choose.
From your replies, I can see there actually are a bunch of interesting complications to use at night. I’ll experiment.
And AutoWake does seem interesting.