When the Apple Watch was first announced, one of my first questions was ‘”Is it going to be able to track my sleep?” Having been a fan of using the Jawbone UP and Nike Fuelband for years, sleep tracking is a feature that has become important to me.
After watching the keynote, it was obvious that with day long battery life, the Apple Watch wasn’t going to be able to get through the night. It wasn’t a surprise that sleep tracking hadn’t been mentioned as a built-in feature. watchOS 1.0 also had limitations that wouldn’t allow third-party developers to pull data from the Apple Watch’s sensors. So unless Apple opened this up or created its own app, Apple Watch sleep tracking wasn’t going to happen.
Fast forward to watchOS 2 and developers now have the option of using the Apple Watch’s sensor data, which means sleep tracking with the Apple Watch is a possibility.
Why sleep track?
Sleep has massive importance to our wellbeing; it helps us concentrate, stay calm, and generally have more energy throughout our day. I have found it useful to see how much sleep I’m getting to be able to compensate. For example, if I know I only got 4 hours of sleep one night, I will make sure that I go to bed a little earlier the next night to make up for it.
How do I track my sleep?
I use a new app from developer David Smith called Sleep++, which enables Apple Watch sleep tracking, in lieu of Apple providing their own native solution.
Managing battery life
Since the Apple Watch only offers a single day of battery life, the most obvious question is how can you get through a whole 24 hour period and be ready to wear the Watch again the following day?
My solution is to charge as soon as I wake up. This means my Apple Watch is charging while I’m in the shower and having my breakfast. I don’t charge before I go to bed. Through a typical day (including a run or walking session) I tend to end up with around 40% battery left. A top up in the morning for 1/2 an hour or so ends up being good enough.
When you activate Sleep++, be sure to put your Apple Watch into Airplane Mode. Doing this will result in Sleep++ only consuming around 10-15% of your battery.
Launch Sleep++ on your Apple Watch and tap Start Sleeping and that’s it. When you wake up in the morning, launch the app again and tap Stop Sleeping. Sleep++ will process your data and your sleep patterns appear in a list with your other days.
Sleep++ shows you the start/end times for your sleep and a chart that analyzes what percent of the night was restless sleep. In future versions of Sleep++ I’d like to be able to increase the scale or zoom in so that I can see more detail, like what exact time between 3 AM and 4 AM was I restless and for how long?
Other Apple Watch sleep tracking options
While I prefer Sleep++, there are a few alternatives that have cropped up in the App Store as well for those of you that want to weigh your options. If you try and of the others listed below, let me know in the comments how they’re working for you.
Not sure why I’m getting this dialog:
Not Authorized
Please ensure that
Sleep++ has been given
permission to access
your Monitor and
Fitness data.
Which app is this dialog appearing in?, Health.app?
I’m getting the same thing! I can’t make it work!
Me too. It’s in the app on my watch. When I woke up this morning it said not authorized and wouldn’t stop my sleep. I redownloaded it and redid All the settings. Still the same thing.
For what it’s worth, I just rebooted my Watch and the problem went away, and my sleep data was saved. I’ve reached out to the developer to see if he can get to the bottom of it.
Same issue here (“not authorized” error). I followed the developer’s instructions from his twitter page and still no luck (re-starting devices, etc). . I’m deleting the app and will look for something more reliable. S
Same sleep++ not authorized msg here! App sucks! Delete! Bye bye!