Sleep Tracking on an Apple Watch
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There are various third-party apps that add advanced sleep tracking features to Apple Watches, enabling you to track sleep with apple watch; some are free, while others require a small subscription fee.
Apple has enhanced their sleep tracking experience with iOS 16 and watchOS 9, adding insights such as Sleep Stages, Amounts, and Comparisons to make its tracking even more comprehensive, perfect to maintain your sleep schedule. To access your Sleep app on your watch, tap on “my Tracking”. You can see the amount of sleep and sleep quality, as it is recorded by your Apple Watch. To view the amount of sleep data, open the Health app on iPhone and navigate to Browse > Sleep > tap sleep.
How to set up sleep schedule on your Apple Watch
To track your sleep with an Apple watch, it needs to be linked to an iPhone with iOS 16 or later or watchOS 9. Tap the ‘My Watch’ tab to find the sleep schedule. Be sure you’ve appropriately paired your Apple Watch and turn on sleep tracking. When enabled, the Sleep app will begin collecting wrist movement data at night for comparison with heart rate and respiratory rates (on Apple Watch Series 8+ and Ultra models) to provide you with more in-depth analysis into your sleeping patterns.
Edit your sleep schedule
You can edit sleep settings directly on your watch, including setting a new schedule, changing wind down times, and adding a wake-up reminder, to enhance your sleep history. You should wear your Apple watch before your wind down process begins. Moreover, you can customize the behavior of your device during your sleep by restricting notifications or altering display settings, providing you a more personalized sleep experience.
To evaluate your sleep patterns and quantity, you can examine your sleep over a 14-day duration in the Health app using Sleep on Apple Watch. This way, you can view your sleep history. There, you can view your sleep by observing the average durations spent in each stage: REM, Core, and Deep, as well as the average duration per night and the number of times you woke up during the night.
Focus as another new way of sleep tracking
Focus offers a new way of tracking sleep, altering display settings during your scheduled Wind Down or Bedtime, and reactivating it at your scheduled Wakeup time to help create personalized sleep schedules. Perfect for people who find it difficult to shut off screens at the end of a long day or who simply wish to reduce screen time before sleeping, Sleep Focus can be managed through Apple Watch app on iPhone by selecting Settings then Focus.
By pressing the digital crown and opening the App view on your Watch itself, you can access your sleep settings directly. Here, you’ll be able to view your current schedule, edit Wake Up/Bedtime times and configure sounds & haptics settings – as well as share results across devices by toggling “Show on Other Apple Devices” option in this menu.
Sleep Tracking on the Apple Watch Series 9
The Apple Watch Series 9, featuring sleep tracking, allows you to monitor your sleep during the night, viewing your sleep history, and examining sleep trends over an extended period. Furthermore, using heart rate to monitor, blood flow as well as movement detection capabilities can enhance the sleep history details when using the feature that tracks my sleep on an Apple watch. Plus, its ECG (electrocardiogram) feature takes an ECG reading in 30 seconds that gives an estimate of overall heart health.
See your Sleep Data
You can see your sleep details, including quality of sleep, through your iPhone Health app or by tracking your sleep with Apple Watch. By wearing your watch to bed, you can see your history from the past week, month, or six months displayed as a bar graph; furthermore, day/night mode settings give more control of how it displays itself.
Sleep trackers allow users to set a “wind down” time. During this period, your watch starts its own bedtime routine by changing screen and notification modes into nighttime modes and beginning its own bedtime rituals when you wear your watch to bed. By default, wind downs last 45 minutes.
Your Sleep Stages
Apple has enhanced its sleep monitoring feature on iOS 16 and WatchOS 9 by introducing ‘Sleep Stages’, making it easier to comprehend your sleeping patterns and gain valuable insights to improve your sleep. The Sleep app shows the percentage of total sleep time you spent in each stage – such as REM, core, or deep – as well as any length spent therein, making it easier to track your sleep quality with Apple.
Get more detailed insight into your sleeping patterns by tapping Show More Sleep Data in the Health app on your iPhone. This shows a chart on your Apple Watch with your data for the previous 14 days, indicating average sleep duration and other relevant statistics so that you can effectively meet your sleep goals and keep tracking your sleep quality.
Change your sleep schedule
If you want to make changes to your schedule on an iPhone, selecting the current calendar from the list and tapping Edit can help make adjustments to bedtime/wakeup times as well as choose which days will remain active in this schedule.
Sleep tracking with the ‘Sleep’ app on your watch, or By gathering data each night, and using it for analysis, it will guide you in areas that need improvement and help identify issues you need to discuss with a healthcare provider in order to improve your sleep. Unfortunately, consumer sleep trackers cannot diagnose sleep disorders and should not be used as replacement for clinical sleep studies.
Sleep Data on the Apple Watch Ultra 2
Setting up sleep tracking on an Apple Watch Ultra 2 using the sleep setup is easy when you take your Apple Watch to bed and open the watch app. Simply set a sleep goal and bedtime using the Watch app on your iPhone, enable an alarm if necessary and select your wake-up time when you wear your watch to bed – everything can be managed through its interface.
Specialties of sleep tracking on the Ultra 2
After setting your schedule, your watch uses this data to calculate your average sleep and wakeup times, then suggests a Bedtime and WakeUp time each day, unless your watch battery dies. Upon accessing the Health app, you can then see your sleep trends as recorded by your Apple Watch. To activate your sleep tracking, go to your Apple Watch app and turn on sleep tracking. In addition, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 uses special accelerometer and gyroscope sensors to track wrist movement throughout the night; this allows it to detect when you move, wake up or change position which helps focus your sleep by changing display color accordingly.
Not only do the Apple Watch Series 8 and Ultra include blood oxygen monitoring capabilities, but they also provide comprehensive apple watch sleep data using the apple watch sleep feature. This advanced technology combines infrared and green LEDs with photodiodes that measure light reflected off your skin to measure your oxygen level – useful in tracking chronic health conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure.
Apple Watch is not tracking its sleep data in a user-friendly format, which is why users often rely on third-party apps like Autosleep to gather more comprehensive information. Furthermore, both the Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra come equipped with double the battery life compared to their predecessors and can remain in low power conservation mode for up to 72 hours in case they need to remain at home overnight.
Following your sleep during the night, your sleep data from the Apple Watch is automatically dispatched to your iPhone and is reviewable within Apple’s Health App. Here, you can browse Apple’s various tabs in the open the Health app – like Sleep Stages (a breakdown of how much time was spent in REM, Core, and Deep sleep), Amounts and Comparisons.
Sleep Data on the Apple Watch SE (2nd Gen)
Apple Watch Series 3 and later with watchOS 9 provide accurate information about each stage of sleep, such as the period of gime spent in REM, light and deep slumber as well as your average sleeping duration. Additionally, newer watches also record heart rate and respiratory rate during your sleep and upload this data directly into the Apple health app along with all other sleep-related information. You can view this sleep history when you set sleep tracking on the Apple Watch and open the sleep app. In addition to viewing an overview of your night’s restfulness, using sleep with apple watch, you can also access trended data for each week, month or 6 month period, including how much sleep you get.
How to start Sleep tracking
To start tracking your sleep on an Apple watch, you must tap the sleep in both your iPhone and Apple watch for enabling it. To do this, open up the Health app on both devices, navigate to Sleep and click Get Started to begin setting it up for the first time. When asked, follow on-screen instructions until setup has completed successfully, so you can still turn on track sleep on your Apple Watch.
Customizing your sleep schedule
After you have enabled sleep tracking on your iPhone via the Health app, you can customize your sleep schedule, set sleep goals and adjust your wind-down period to improve your sleep. Notifications can also be set prior to bedtime using Wind Down’s reminder function to reduce distractions prior to sleeping.
Once your settings are in place, your watch will enter sleep mode at its designated bedtime and track your slumber until morning. The Sleep app presents all collected data in an easy-to-read summary format including average duration and individual nightly data as well as comparisons of heart rate and respiration to identify any possible sleep issues such as apnea or insomnia.
As with other models like the Apple Watch, the iPhone’s Health app’s Sleep tab allows viewing the amount of total sleep from last night’s data easily. You can select either Summary or More views for further in-depth analysis such as Stages, Amounts and Comparisons – an invaluable feature when trying to identify potential sleep issues and take appropriate actions.
To summarize your sleep tracking on Apple Watches,
When you put on your Apple Watch in the evening, Sleep Mode automatically activates. Before your wind-down period, ensure you have turned off your sleep schedule. This setting switches off display and activates Do Not Disturb according to a bedtime you specify in Settings app; or manually turn this feature on by swiping up on watch face and selecting Sleep Mode option.
As soon as your watch awakens, a comprehensive summary of the previous night’s rest will be displayed for review, including an infographic that displays how long you were asleep for and any wake-ups during that night’s rest. Furthermore, it will give an average length of rest over 14 days.
Your watch can also monitor your heart rate and respiratory rate, which gives an idea of how well or poorly you slept; these statistics may offer insights into this, however they are not clinically applicable.
For people wishing to further investigate their sleep habits, the Apple Watch offers a Sleep Stages graph, which displays your sleep data for the past two weeks to help you monitor the time spent in each sleep stage. You can use your Apple Watch to compare the time spent in each sleep stage throughout the week, helping you detect trends and possibly making adjustments to your sleep schedules to help enhance rest.
The Apple Watch can identify and record snoring, making it perfect for partners and spouses who suffer from it and want to view their sleep history. You can access this feature by going to Sleep on the Apple Watch App and then scrolling down to view your amount of total sleep. To find information about your sleep, tap the sleep from the Sleep Stages on your Apple Watch.
When it comes to giving a complete picture of your sleep, Apple watches fall short in regards to providing detailed insights into sleep stages. Unlike Apple, competitors such as Fitbit and Withings offer details like REM sleep, different sleep stages, and the duration of each, much like the Apple Watch. This allows users to observe their sleep with the apple watch and compare their sleep patterns. While Apple doesn’t delve deep into these aspects via Apple support, the focus remains on assisting users in managing behaviors to improve sleep, such as maintaining consistent bedtime and wakeup times when you sleep on an Apple watch.
Your iPhone provides you with access to an in-depth view of your sleep with its Health app, where detailed charts of your overall sleeping habits can help reveal any trends over time that might otherwise be difficult to recognize from one night’s data alone.
Sleep Focus can also help, disabling the watch screen and minimizing distractions for the time between wind down time and your scheduled bedtime. This feature is especially beneficial if the aim is to minimize screen time or hit the sack earlier, helping you to meet your sleep goals.
Your Apple watch uses accurate wrist-worn sensors to measure your movement and heart rate to track sleep duration. Even though it might not be as precise as polysomnography, this Apple watch on your wrist offers superb start and accuracy in tracking sleep, compared to other devices we tested. However, accuracy will depend upon how active you are during each day/night cycle – this makes accurate tracking somewhat unpredictable.