There’s a lot of confusion surrounding whether or not the Apple Watch tracks sleep. I suspect it has to do with how Apple uses sleep tracking in watchOS, and how poor their marketing is around it. It’s a bit frustrating because there are a few places where they could be clearer and they’re not. Here’s what you need to know about whether or not Apple Watch SE tracks sleep.
The Apple watch SE can track more than just your active movements in a day. It can actually record how many hours you spend asleep, and even make conclusions based on the quality of your rest.
The Apple Watch is more than just a luxurious fashion accessory. In addition to its multiple sensors, the Apple Watch could be your personal sleep coach. By keeping track of your heart rate throughout the night, the Apple Watch can monitor your sleep.
➡ Best Apple Watch sleep tracker
According to the National Sleep Foundation, health problems such as obesity, heart disease and diabetes are caused by poor sleep. And did you know that poor sleep can actually shorten your life? It is recommended to sleep 8 hours every night but according to most studies, more than half of Americans are getting less than 7 hours of good sleep a night. Having this device around you wrist will not only give you a fitness tracker that fits how you work out but also helps you improve your health through sleep and weight loss.
Apple watch is a great gadget to improve your daily lifestyle, and with various fitness applications installed the focus remains on health. The new Apple watch SE did improve compared to the previous version, what I like the most is the smaller size and better resolution. This gadget is perfect for those who want to improve their personal health status and want tools for running, food calorie tracking or simply planning a day efficiently. The latest version of watchOS allows you to install a ton of applications that make this piece of technology what it’s known for – easy to use, yet complex to some degree.
With the release of iOS 11, Apple Watch records your heart rate when it’s idle and can use your heart activity to predict when you go to bed and wake up. When Bedtime Mode is enabled, you can choose the time you want to wake up. This will cause the screen on the watch to switch off which helps save battery life.
Apple’s “Move” coaching feature has been developed to encourage users to try avoiding sitting for more than an hour at a time by moving around for at least one minute every hour. With this in mind, it makes sense that if Apple Watch knows when you’re asleep and for how long – it could track your sleep patterns and inform you when you’ve hit your target for each night.
➡ Does Apple Watch Track Your Sleep
The sleep that Apple talks about is based on motion. There are some clever algorithms behind it, but the watch won’t take into account how soundly you sleep or how long it takes to fall asleep.
Instead, Apple’s figured out how many times you were in deep and light sleep and what percentage of time you spent in each (you can see this in the Health app on the iPhone). With that data, the Watch is able to approximate your sleep time.
➡ Which apple watch tracks sleep ?
How Apple Watch SE tracks sleep
The Apple Watch is capable of doing so much, and many of the features aren’t even discovered until you delve into its settings. In watchOS 7, one feature was introduced that I believe makes a huge difference to health and wellbeing — the ability to track your sleep.
You can now tell Apple’s wearable device when you go to bed, wake up and fall asleep. It then tracks your sleep and works out how restless you are during the night.
➡ The Best running app for Apple Watch: Free/Paid
The new Apple Watch SE comes with a brand-new processor, which results in amazing battery life. This is already an improvement compared to the original Apple Watch. Add to that the fact that it’s now possible to record your sleep and you’re ready for a device that can monitor a lot more than just your heart rate. However, understanding whether the data received is accurate or not isn’t always straightforward.
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Sleep tracking uses advanced sensors and algorithms to automatically detect the quality of your sleep. And it’s just one of the unique features Apple Watch SE offers. Sleep stages are indicated using the same activity rings you see with Activity tracking. You can view your sleep stages right on your Apple Watch SE and track trends over time in the Health app on iPhone.
Sleep tracking is one of the key features on Apple Watch SE. This setting enables the watch to monitor your sleep in detail. By capturing data during your sleep, it helps you view insights on how light and deep your sleep cycles were, how many times you were awakened and what time you went to bed.
Sleep analysis also predicts how well you slept based on these measures and also includes an estimated number of hours you slept. More details are available in the Apple Watch companion app under My Watch > Health > Sleep.
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Apple Watch SE is an advanced activity and sleep tracker that measures your precise daily steps, distance, and flights climbed with added elevation data from wrist-based heart rate. Apple Watch also shows daily and weekly Activity rings for monitoring exercise, standing, and movement. With watchOS 4, you can see your daily summary right on your watch face.
But that’s just the start: It’s also a powerful wellness tool, with breathing exercises to help you manage stress, gentle wake reminders to encourage you to move, and Workouts to improve your fitness.
Conclusion
The Apple Watch SE contains a number of sensors to use when you’re sleeping. The device tracks your heart rate, time spent in bed and also how long it takes you to fall asleep. With the included Health app being able to read that information, it collates data to produce charts and graphics on both your activity and your sleep each day.
The way Apple Watch SE measures sleep is unique. While you’re sleeping, Apple Watch SE measures your heart rate every 10 minutes and records the difference between your resting heart rate when you’re moving around and your heart rate when you’re at rest. Unlike other devices, which may use an optical heart rate monitor, Apple Watch SE uses the electrical heart sensor integrated into the back of the case to measure your heart rate at night. Then its algorithms calculate your average restful sleep, wakes you silently when it’s time to get up and offers a convenient summary of your sleep quality in the morning before you start your day.
Pulling in data from the gyroscope and accelerometer to track your activity and rest, Apple’s sleep tracking features in WatchOS 5 are automatically on, always recording unless you tell them to stop. As well as displaying how long you’ve been asleep and how many times you’ve been awake, they also provide a breakdown of your night’s sleep into light and deep sleep.
When you wake up in the morning, choose a goal for each night in the Watch app, such as sleeping a consistent 7 to 8 hours. As you go to bed each night, your watch will guide you through breathing exercises intended to help you relax and fall asleep more quickly.
If the watch doesn’t recognize that you’ve fallen asleep, it will track when your last movement occurred and ask if you’re still awake or asleep. At the end of the night, it will suggest an alarm time based on when you fell asleep and how long before your alarm you were awake.