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Good sleep app comparable to Fitbit.

T

TKSX

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 10, 2021
195
184
Hello all your sleep trackers out there.

Do you have any recomedations in a good sleep app for the apple watch that is comparable to the build in app that is installed in fitbit smartwatches? I would like something that can track my sleep as well as afternoon naps.

Thanks in advance for your input.
 
Downloaded the autosleep app yesterday (paid for it). Thanks for the recomendation. The app does everything I need it to do (and then some).
 
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stu.h said:
What’s the difference between using a 3rd party app and the in-built sleep monitoring on the Watch? (Unless you have an old model)
Click to expand...
build in one only tells you when you sleep and when you wake up. It does not record any naps.
 
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stu.h said:
What’s the difference between using a 3rd party app and the in-built sleep monitoring on the Watch? (Unless you have an old model)
Click to expand...
TKSX said:
build in one only tells you when you sleep and when you wake up. It does not record any naps.
Click to expand...
I suffer badly from insomnia ... waking up a number of times during the night ... including getting up to use the toilet! I find the built in app next to useless. It tells me when I 'went to sleep' and then when I wake up ... but hardly ever seems to pick up the numerous times that I have been awake in the night. When you know you've had a bad night and the app says ... "well done, you've achieved your 8 hour sleep target" ... it's somewhat irritating!!!

I have been using Pillow on and off - but again I don't think it's that accurate in picking up the times I am awake at night. The last time I used it it said I had slept just over 5 hours in total. But there is a facility to recalculate your sleep pattern ... which I did ... and it then gives me a number of options (5 or 6 I think) ... ranging from less than 4 hours to more than 6 hours!!! I have raised this as an issue with the developer and they are looking into it ... but I've stopped using it!

For those that use Autosleep - how accurate does it seem in terms of picking up periods of being awake during the night? I appreciate these apps can't be 100% accurate ... but I'd like to have a bit more confidence in what they are telling me as I want to use the data when speaking with my doctor about my sleep issues.
 
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For those that use Autosleep - how accurate does it seem in terms of picking up periods of being awake during the night? I appreciate these apps can't be 100% accurate ... but I'd like to have a bit more confidence in what they are telling me as I want to use the data when speaking with my doctor about my sleep issues.
Click to expand...

Excellent this is mine last night. This just a portion of what you see. Green means awake and I was out of bed at about 1:30 and again around 2:30am. Purple means deep sleep and blue is light sleep. There is so much more it shows that I can’t show here.
552a8b0de79ca915221afb987f5e8c31.jpg
 
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heavysoul said:
including getting up to use the toilet! I find the guilty in app next to useless. It tells me when I 'went to sleep' and then when I wake up ... but hardly ever seems to pick up the numerous times that I have been awake in the night.
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I'm surprised it didn't register yours. The only time I woke up to take a leak in the past week Sleep seems to notice it.
sleep.jpg
 
Pink2 said:
Excellent this is mine last night. This just a portion of what you see. Green means awake and I was out of bed at about 1:30 and again around 2:30am. Purple means deep sleep and blue is light sleep. There is so much more it shows that I can’t show here.
552a8b0de79ca915221afb987f5e8c31.jpg
Click to expand...

That's really helpful ... thanks. I might give it a try 👍
 
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heavysoul said:
It usually picks up the fact I got out of bed ... but then as soon as I'm back in bed it thinks I am asleep ... when I might be just laying there ... tossing and turning ... and very wide awake 😫
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Oh I see. That's very hard to get right. I don't think there's any app that can get that right, not all the time at least. It might know if you're tossing and turning all the time but normally that wouldn't be the case.
 
matrix07 said:
Oh I see. That's very hard to get right. I don't think there's any app that can get that right, not all the time at least. It might know if you're tossing and turning all the time but normally that wouldn't be the case.
Click to expand...

Pillow 'tries' to do that ... I guess from measuring small movements when laying in bed. It gives you a breakdown of awake, light sleep, deep sleep and REM sleep ... so either it's measuring it somehow (possibly using heart and respiration rates) ... or it's just making it up and we are paying for nothing :oops:

I have now downloaded Autosleep - so will see how that goes.
 
matrix07 said:
AutoSleep is even better than Fitbit sleep.
Click to expand...

Can you explain why you think it's better?

From what I've seen Autosleep is quite inaccurate compared to the Fitbit:

I want to switch from Fitbit haven't found anything that would compare to Fitbit's sleep tracking.

Thanks
 
mrt209 said:
From what I've seen Autosleep is quite inaccurate compared to the Fitbit
Click to expand...
or Fitbit is quite inaccurate compared to the AutoSleep?

Tracking sleep with watch-like device have limitations. The ones that present whole kind of data, whether it is AutoSleep, Fitbit or Samsung, those data will come from some kind of data guessing, (using their algorithms). This is why Apple Sleep presents you with only 2 types of data. Hours you're in bed and hours you're asleep. For myself these two are super accurate.

But people wants more data than that and that comes 3rd party apps on Apple Watch, or official app on Fitbit and Samsung. The more the merrier, right? But is it scientifically proven?

Still, AutoSleep will let you fine tune your sleep data and it will learn. If the data doesn't look correct you can fine tune it and hopefully in time it will be more and more accurate for you.
 
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matrix07 said:
or Fitbit is quite inaccurate compared to the AutoSleep?

Tracking sleep with watch-like device have limitations. The ones that present whole kind of data, whether it is AutoSleep, Fitbit or Samsung, those data will come from some kind of data guessing, (using their algorithms). This is why Apple Sleep presents you with only 2 types of data. Hours you're in bed and hours you're asleep. For myself these two are super accurate.

But people wants more data than that and that comes 3rd party apps on Apple Watch, or official app on Fitbit and Samsung. The more the merrier, right? But is it scientifically proven?

Still, AutoSleep will let you fine tune your sleep data and it will learn. If the data doesn't look correct you can fine tune it and hopefully in time it will be more and more accurate for you.
Click to expand...

None of these wrist-based devices can of course replace a polysomnography and should only be used to get a general idea of one's sleep. As for the accuracy of Fitbit devices, there have been several studies showing that they perform better than other devices (example1, example2).

I did not know that AutoSleep can be fine tuned and will improve over time, sounds interesting.
 
in past, with phone apps they tended to use accelerometers to examine the phase of sleep you are in. We actually move full limbs around more during deep sleep and are somewhat paralyzed during dream sleep. And we go thru a complete cycle, usually, every 90 minutes from dream sleep thru deep and back to dream. So, the software algorithms probably use that natural 90 rhythm and full limb movements/non-movement to estimate when we are asleep or awake. EKG data can also give feedback of sleep stages now, of course, so they have multiple data sources to maximize the guessing. Not a polysomnograph for sure, but the correlations should be improving with watch & polygraphs with each rendition. poly for the real problems and diagnosis, watch for daily monitoring. and then there are O2 sensors…etc. interesting times. I can see sofware learning your specific patterns to improve accuracy.
 
mrt209 said:
None of these wrist-based devices can of course replace a polysomnography and should only be used to get a general idea of one's sleep. As for the accuracy of Fitbit devices, there have been several studies showing that they perform better than other devices (example1, example2).

I did not know that AutoSleep can be fine tuned and will improve over time, sounds interesting.
Click to expand...
I wouldn’t say from those example that FitBit “performs better than other devices”. That is misleading. For example the conclusion says
Sleep-staging Fitbit models showed promising performance, especially in differentiating wake from sleep. However, although these models are a convenient and economical means for consumers to obtain gross estimates of sleep parameters and time spent in sleep stages, they are of limited specificity and are not a substitute for PSG.
Click to expand...
Just promising. Nowhere it concluded FitBit was better than ”any devices” and
In reference to polysomnography (PSG), nonsleep-staging Fitbit models tended to overestimate total sleep time (TST; range from approximately 7 to 67 mins
Click to expand...
That doesn‘t sound extremely good. Considering this study was from 2019 and Apple Watch just have O2 sensor in 2020 I’ll say Apple Watch now has everything it needs from a wristband to monitor sleep as accurate as possible. Still, Apple is not go all in since in their eyes sleep science is not at the stage that we understand it completely.
sleep 01.jpg


I'm of the opinion that all these data is good to know to see the trend only, not something we can be serious about, yet.
 
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I've been using Autosleep for the last 6 days and in that short period I cam say that it is no better than Pillow. If anything I would say it is worse. Yes, there's loads of data displayed in all sorts of fancy ways ... but that means nothing if the numbers don't reflect reality.

Take last night for example ... it says I was asleep for 7h 28m!! HAHA ... if only! The green bars throughout the night have rightly picked up the fact I got up to use the toilet (it wasn't a great night for me). But it suggests I went pretty much straight back to sleep - I didn't! But the obvious and big error for me is that I was awake around 6am and struggled to get back to sleep. I ended up picking my phone up around 6.30am and checked news etc until almost 7.30am. And yet I was apparently asleep for most of that hour!!

When clicking on adjust (like you can do with Pillow) ... you get 10 options. This ranged from 1h 31mins asleep to 9h 01min sleep!!! All options recorded me as being alseep when I was using my phone!

Maybe for those that sleep well it captures overall sleep fairly well. But then why do you need to track it?

For me ... as someone that suffers from insomnia, I wanted to try and check how bad it is and see if there were any patterns that might help me. But based on the 6 days I have used it, I will be deleting it ... like I have deleted Pillow, unfortunately!!
 

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