How to Track Your Sleep With an Apple Watch


The Apple Watch has a built-in sleep tracker, however it may be exhausting to search out. Right here’s the best way to entry it, the best way to set it up in order that it correctly data how a lot sleep you’re getting, and the best way to perceive the outcomes. 

Does my Apple Watch assist sleep monitoring? 

Sleep monitoring was launched with WatchOS version 7 (launched in 2020). That model of WatchOS works on watches from Collection 3 and newer, paired with an iPhone 6S or newer, with iOS 14 and newer. 

In different phrases: The oldest gadgets that can work are a 2015 cellphone, a 2017 watch, and 2020 releases of the software program that run on them. So long as your Apple Watch isn’t really historical, it ought to assist this. Behold as I show with a Collection 4 watch…

The place to search out the Apple Watch Sleep app

You’ll must navigate to 4 totally different locations to entry all the sleep-related options of your Watch and iPhone. (Three of them are on the cellphone.)

On the Apple Watch

Apple watch screenshots: finding the app, and setting up sleep schedule


Credit score: Beth Skwarecki

In your Watch, search for a mattress icon with a greenish-blue background. If you faucet it, you’ll be capable to test (or set) your sleep schedule. In any other case, don’t fear about this app; you don’t must open it to make use of the sleep-tracking characteristic.

Within the Well being app

Sleep settings in the Health app


Credit score: Beth Skwarecki

In your iPhone, the sleep capabilities are a part of the Well being app. (There is no such thing as a devoted Sleep app.) Open the Well being app, faucet Browse, then faucet Sleep. From right here, you’ll be able to view information on current nights of sleep, and set your sleep schedule for the long run.

On the backside of this display screen, you’ll be able to edit your subsequent sleep schedule or your full sleep schedule (the one which repeats day by day and weekly). This tells your cellphone while you’re planning on sleeping. Faucet Full Schedule & Choices to set that schedule, and scroll right down to the underside for the subsequent step.

Within the Watch app

Watch app and Sleep Focus settings


Credit score: Beth Skwarecki

To verify your watch will observe your sleep, that you must configure your Watch-specific sleep settings within the Watch app. The simplest approach to entry this from the Well being app (faucet Full Schedule & Choices from the Sleep display screen), and on the backside of that display screen, there’s a hyperlink to Handle Sleep within the Apple Watch App. Faucet that, and also you’ll go straight to these Watch settings. 

Activate “Observe Sleep with Apple Watch” to allow monitoring, and activate “Charging Reminders” so the Watch can notify you to cost it earlier than bedtime in case your battery is low within the night.

Within the Settings app

Sorry, we’re not fairly carried out. Within the Settings app, you’ll be able to arrange your Sleep Focus. That is non-compulsory for monitoring, however it offers you entry to specialised residence screens and notification settings that can activate at bedtime. There’s a hyperlink from right here again to the settings app. (Hey, this can be complicated, however at the least it’s simple to navigate from every app to the others.) 

Easy methods to arrange your Apple Watch to file your sleep

You possibly can totally discover all of the sleep-related options via the apps I discussed above, however right here is the brief model. Do these items and also you’ll have your Watch recording your sleep tonight:

  1. Arrange a Sleep schedule (Well being app > Sleep > Full Schedule & Choices).

  2. Faucet Handle Sleep With Apple Watch on the backside of that display screen. (This sends you to the Watch app.)

  3. Activate Observe Sleep with Apple Watch.

  4. Put on your Apple Watch to mattress. It ought to be unlocked, and when you have a passcode, you’ll need wrist detection turned on. 

The Apple Watch will use the sleep schedule (or Sleep focus, which you’ll activate manually) to know while you may be sleeping. Throughout this time, it makes use of your actions and your cellphone use, to detect whether or not you’re sleeping, and to estimate if you end up in every stage of sleep. 

Easy methods to learn your outcomes from the Apple Watch sleep app

To see the way you slept, go to the Sleep part of the Well being app in your cellphone. (If you happen to get up earlier than your sleep schedule ends, you might want to attend till it’s completed earlier than the info turns into obtainable.) 

On this display screen, you’ll see your sleep levels represented with deep sleep on the backside in purple, “core” (that’s, mild) sleep within the center in blue, REM larger up in lighter blue, and awake in orange on the high. (That mentioned, no wearable goes to be utterly correct on the subject of sleep levels, so don’t learn an excessive amount of into these.)

The app may also present you your coronary heart charge in the course of the night time, your sleep development (mine says “You slept a median of seven hr 22 min over the past 7 days”), and month-to-month and yearly highlights exhibiting whether or not you’re getting kind of sleep than previously.