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iOS 14 and watchOS 7 Sleep Features: Sleep Mode, Wind Down, Sleep Tracking and More

All these new features seem very complicated for the average user. Most people just want to set an alarm in the morning and be done with it.

it’s also not clear to me what the advantages are for this complicated mess (if you only have an iPhone). There’s no real sleep tracking and do not disturb already exists.

btw: why is the icon of Do Not Disturb a moon?
 
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Apple has Bbedit, why use a AppleWatch to the same without the watch in your arm, and wake with less battery ???
 
I really don't want to have to get into the habit of charging TWICE a day. Normally on my AW 5 I have on average about 20 percent battery at the end of wearing it all day. Since the AW STILL doesn't have battery statistics I'm just estimating. So if it is taking ~30 for this, which seems extremely high to me, this won't work for me. Not only would I have to charge it in the morning before putting it on (instead of overnight), I'd have to charge it in the evening before putting it back on to sleep. Also charging in the morning is problematic for me as most days I wake up and and off doing stuff almost immediately.

I don't think this really useful to me until Apple greatly improves battery life, charging time, replaceable battery or some combination. However I do plan on giving it a try myself soon.
 
I installed WatchOS 7 PB on my series 5 last night. I had no problems with the install. Battery drain overnight (11pm - 6am) was 13%, which is what I have been seeing with my series 3 running the DB release of WatchOS 7.
 
Vasilisxd said:
Autosleep App is so much better , you just sleep and it’s tracking it. I don’t understand why Apple’s tacking requires so much scheduling and programming.
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I believe part of that is to get a person in the habit or going to be regularly at a set time, and being more cognizant of continuing to engage in activities that can impede a good night’s rest. Manual setting and notifications help bring those things to the forefront each night.
 
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BeardMan7 said:
In the "Do not disturb" mode you can allow calls. You can find this setting in the settings app of your iPhone under "Do not disturb".
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Thanks. That’s an option but I really only want that at night not for other times that DnD is on.
 
McKodiak said:
I've been using the sleep features in both the phone and watch since the watch public beta. I wish it would do a bit more in analyzing the type of sleep. I wake up exhausted no matter how much sleep I get.
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I had the same problem - I was 'sleeping' 7 to 8 hours but waking up exhausted too. I decided to try tracking my sleep more closely (in my case I decided to try the Oura ring) and it turns out that although I thought I was a restful sleeper, and slept pretty much through the night, in actual fact I am pretty restless with large periods of light sleep which are not very useful when it comes to making you feel rested.
Admittedly to get accurate readings on your sleep phases you need proper equipment but tracking my sleep has helped me to realise that I sleep inefficiently and so to get a good nights sleep i need to actually spend longer in bed than 7 or 8 hours. I have altered my patterns so that I get to bed at pretty much the same time every night and I never wake up with an alarm - I find that I wake up pretty consistently at the same time (within about a 15 minute window).

I now generally feel much more rested after a nights sleep.

TLDR - maybe you are not getting enough deep sleep despite being 'asleep'. If that is the case there a definitely things you can do to improve this.
 
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Hey everyone remember how we slept before devices "helped" us do it? You know, get tired, go to bed, close eyes... and pretty soon like magic, there it was, sleep, and waking up the next morning. Those were the days!

Seriously if you use devices for sleeping you should know that the EMF from your WiFi and that 4G tower nearby is going to disturb your sleep more than the device can possibly help. Turn off WiFi and put it in airplane mode at the very least.

As for the watch and airpods, don't go and intentionally fry your brains for no reason please?!

So for heaven's sake do not sleep with a freaking bluetooth / wiFi / LTE watch on! Do some research on EMF, or, more efficiently, simlpy try it for yourself.

Sleep without any EMF for a few nights (WiFi router OFF too) - and see how it goes. You will notice a difference. Just try it!
 
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The “Good Morning” and “Good Evening” screens are terrible. The text blends in with the background making it illegible. Plus it dismisses sporadically before you’ve read all the info. Apple still hasn’t fixed it in 3 iterations.
 
I don't really get the whole sleep thing. Currently in iOS 13 I find "bedtime" to just be a silly feature that assumes you go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, and it assumes that you will magically go to sleep when it tells you to. Not even your mom can make you do that. As for wind down, just put down your phone when you want to wind down. Relying on your phone to suggest you do more things on your phone in order to wind down is just silly. Turn on do not disturb, stop calls and notification from appearing, and turn it off when my alarm goes off. Also the "good morning" thing is silly, I always laugh when I get the good morning screen when I've been at work for 3 hours... or when I don't get it when I wake up late. It just assumes that morning is at 8 am and that's all. I'd say morning is just whenever you wake up.

Also I just can't imagine anyone getting a notification to go to bed and then going like "Oh wow, I almost forgot to go to bed! Well good thing my phone reminded me!"

The only thing that's good about the bedtime app is the non-annoying ringtones that aren't annoying even when being woken up by the same tone for a whole year. That's good sound engineering right there. Except you can't use those ringtones in the regular alarm app, which is the only one that actually makes any sense... I don't get why.

Personally, here's my ideal wake-up app that no one has ever invented yet: it starts a very very silent alarm 1 hour before you need to wake up that gets gradually louder over the course of an hour. It would prepare your brain for waking up before you actually have to. Oh and the sound is just white noise or something very non intrusive.
 
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baryon said:
I don't really get the whole sleep thing. Currently in iOS 13 I find "bedtime" to just be a silly feature that assumes you go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, and it assumes that you will magically go to sleep when it tells you to. Not even your mom can make you do that. As for wind down, just put down your phone when you want to wind down. Relying on your phone to suggest you do more things on your phone in order to wind down is just silly. Turn on do not disturb, stop calls and notification from appearing, and turn it off when my alarm goes off. Also the "good morning" thing is silly, I always laugh when I get the good morning screen when I've been at work for 3 hours... or when I don't get it when I wake up late. It just assumes that morning is at 8 am and that's all. I'd say morning is just whenever you wake up.

Also I just can't imagine anyone getting a notification to go to bed and then going like "Oh wow, I almost forgot to go to bed! Well good thing my phone reminded me!"

The only thing that's good about the bedtime app is the non-annoying ringtones that aren't annoying even when being woken up by the same tone for a whole year. That's good sound engineering right there. Except you can't use those ringtones in the regular alarm app, which is the only one that actually makes any sense... I don't get why.

Personally, here's my ideal wake-up app that no one has ever invented yet: it starts a very very silent alarm 1 hour before you need to wake up that gets gradually louder over the course of an hour. It would prepare your brain for waking up before you actually have to. Oh and the sound is just white noise or something very non intrusive.
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Yes that would actually be a good idea. Gradually louder alarm. But I would also add in the smart lightbulbs to gradually get lighter along with the alarm getting louder. That would be the best wake up app. Hope to see that soon.
 
PurringPigeon said:
Can I use sleep tracking without do not disturb? I may be on call - so I need the phone to ring in case of emergency. Don’t care about other notifications but want the phone but everything I read says it turns on do not disturb. So it’ll be useless for be.
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You should be able to control those parameters within the DND settings.
 
Apple's new Sleep app has some features already found in some other's sleeping app. It's missing the 'Deep Sleep' section though many other sleep apps don't have it either.

Sleep Cycle is relatively good and you don't need an iWatch for it. Just turn it on and it'll monitor your sleep via movement or sound via the microphone.
AutoSleep is OK and uses the iWatch's sensors. Looks like Apple is borrowing some looks and features from AutoSleep.
Both apps have an iWatch app but are unnecessary.

Almost all the Sleeping Apps are Inconsistent with each other as each has their programming on how it records how one sleeps.
The AutoSleep maker does Not like Sleep Cycle, based on an email received when his product was questioned on the inconsistency of how sleep is measured and he specifically mentioned Sleep Cycle which he disliked.

The current Apple Health app's Sleep Analysis function is Not useful at all. It just shows your estimated sleep length and makes comparison from the previous nights sleep to the other nights' sleep patterns.

Maybe people are getting less sleep because of the technology like iDevices instead of putting them away for the night and just sleeping, with all other things being equal.
 
hagar said:
All these new features seem very complicated for the average user. Most people just want to set an alarm in the morning and be done with it.

it’s also not clear to me what the advantages are for this complicated mess (if you only have an iPhone). There’s no real sleep tracking and do not disturb already exists.

btw: why is the icon of Do Not Disturb a moon?
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I also find it very complicated and confusing to set up. There is the DnD mode which can be set automatically during the night. So on top of that there is a wind down mode, a sleep mode, the alarm clock, and the night shift mode. When you have all of this enabled, you basically get multiple layers of lockscreens during the night. I hope they can sort this mess out until release.
 
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This seems unbelievably complex. So much so that many won't even bother with it or will just stick with what ever app they are using now for the same purpose.
 
If you need a nanny phone to get you to settle down and go to sleep at a reasonable time, then I'm not sure what to say.
 
orev said:
I really wish this tracked different levels of sleep, as well as a smart alarm that can wait until you are in light sleep. Very much like Sleep Cycle, but with the advantage of being a native app with deeper level access to sensors and private APIs. A smart alarm is really the holy grail for sleep tracking, otherwise you're just tracking what, the time you went to bed and the time you got up? I can use paper for that.
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You know all those apps can't really track your sleep cycle. It is made up based on an algorithm and your heart rate.
 
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My wife wears a fitbit, and gets pretty detailed sleep info.. I think. I initially thought this might be good to use, perhaps compare to what she gets, but within twenty minutes of winddown, and sleep mode, I turned it off.

Why?

Well... Over the past year, I haven't slept well. I now wear something called a Dexcom to monitor interstitial sugar level. For those who know- when things fall out of range, those alarms get you up. Two in the morning? Why not. And, typically an hour, or two or more fighting to get sugar levels back in line. I don't know how many nights now I've been woken up at some ungodly hour, and within five minutes I'm on a treadmill trying to pull my number back down more quickly than waiting for some insulin to kick in. Some nights, sleep is almost non-existent. It is a battle all to itself brought on by the technology.

So without the sleep mode of the watch, the Apple watch can vibrate, and notify me if things are out of range, and that's typically enough to get me up and treating. The other piece I have is a display of my reading on my apple watch at all times, so I can give it a peek if I'm turning in the night. All very useful things that I rely on, which unfortunately get shut off when in sleep mode.

The more I think about this sleep mode though, I don't really know what it is telling you or I about our sleep that we likely don't already know. I would like to think I know when I had a good sleep or not, and reason behind it. Set a calendar event to remind yourself to get to bed. Don't binge articles, or TV shows late in to the night.
 
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