One of the functions that is most demanded of Apple and specifically its watch is sleep monitoring . This is a highly anticipated feature to have information on how the night is spent and all the events that may occur. Until this function arrives you must resort to third-party applications and one of the best is AutoSleep.
First steps
As soon as you enter the application for the first time, you should take a questionnaire about customs before going to bed, such as bedtime. One of these customs is if you use the Apple Watch while you sleep. This is very important as accurate monitoring is done while wearing the Apple smart watch. Thanks to the sensors it includes, a measurement of the heart pulse is taken, as well as the movements you are making in bed.
In these first steps the application will explain the different functions that you will see in the interface. By following a color pattern, as if it were a traffic light, you will quickly know how you slept. The ideal is to always have excellent sleep, but sometimes the dream is not always perfect.
Representation of the dream
Sleep monitoring is reflected in a clock that reels for hours as you have slept, emphasizing deep sleep, quiet, light sleep and also when you woke up in the middle of the night. Thanks to the movements you are making the application will know what phase of the dream you are in. The heart rate also plays a crucial role, since the representative HR shows the average HR but just below, where it indicates the sleep session, it is broken down in more detail with a graph that you will be manipulating to see at a specific time of night what was happening.
This same report includes the breakdown of hours you have been in each of the stages of sleep and also efficiency. Although they sleep 8 hours, they can be totally inefficient because they are not totally deep and very light. This can clearly explain if you wake up very tired.
In this same report, if you have an Apple Watch Series 4 or higher, the amount of ambient sound that has existed in the room where you slept is detailed. There are several ranges that start from a quiet bedroom to the sound of a short lawn.
One of the most interesting and fun features of this application is undoubtedly the sleep bank that it includes. Just like owing money to a real bank, you can also owe hours of sleep. If you check that you must sleep 8 hours each night but do not meet it, the next morning you will see how you have a percentage of hours in debt. This will make you propose in a more efficient way so that at the end of the week you have slept the recommended 8 hours to be healthier.
On the watch we discussed earlier where sleep events are clearly presented at different times, there are a series of rings. These are very reminiscent of those of the Activity Apple Watch, and must always be filled to achieve optimal sleep. These rings include the hours of sleep, the hours you have slept with optimum quality or the hours you have slept soundly. Also the fall of the pulsations is a parameter that is counted in this ring systems, since it is vital to lower the pulsations during sleep so that it is deep. If you click on these rings you will see in much more detail how that parameter can be completed and the medical definition.
All these parameters can be accessed from the ‘Today’ tab that you will find at the bottom of the application or through the notification that will inform you every morning when you wake up.
Apple Watch autonomy compromised?
One of the big questions you can ask yourself is the impact that this application will have on the autonomy of the Apple Watch. Obviously, collecting and sending data all night, makes autonomy resentful. But the truth is that the efficiency of this application makes it hardly noticeable. It will force you to have other charging parameters, since not being able to do it at night you will have to resort to charging at another time of the day. But for all the data it offers, we are facing an extremely efficient service in this regard.
Editing and calibration
Sometimes the result that the application gives you is not the most correct because you know that you woke up or went to sleep at a different time. That is why when you access the information of the day, on the clock, at the bottom left you will see a small pencil. By clicking on this you can select another analysis that the application of your dream does to see if it is the correct one. It is important to highlight that of the ‘calculations’ that the app does, always choose the one that can be more successful but can fail. When you choose the data that fits reality, this will act as a way to gauge future results.
Record
All the data that is obtained is stored in the Health application and also in the internal history of the application. At the bottom you will find a tab called ‘History’, where you can view all the data obtained on a specific day. The visualization that you have is very similar to the one we have on Apple Watch in the Activity application. You see how each day there is a series of three more or less complete rings to find out which day you slept worse or better. Simply by clicking on one of the rings you can access all the detailed history of that night.
Just above the calendar you will see a bar graph where you can represent the parameter you want. From overall design rating to deep time amount. This is another very visual way of being able to see in a specific month how you have slept well or badly. Every day can be accompanied by a series of notes to collect what we have done before sleeping, such as working late, having a stressful situation or even drinking more than necessary. All these parameters can also influence to outline a clinical judgment about a sleep problem in relation to an external factor. And of course, at the top right you will find the possibility of exporting all this data in .csv format to send it to whomever you see appropriate.
Automatic sleep detection
This application stands out for having to click anywhere to start the dream. It automatically detects when you go to sleep and also when you wake up. But if you do not trust everything in this system, you can on the Apple Watch on the button ‘turn off lights’. From that moment the time will begin to count until you fall asleep, which is called the preparatory phase. This is where detection in the final result may fail somewhat when doing it automatically, since it will depend on the number of turns we make in bed at the beginning.
But not everything is positive, because added to these small calibration errors we can miss some functions. One of these is sound recording at night. This can be interesting to detect if you speak in dreams to know what you can say. It is something that exists in other similar applications but is not present in AutoSleep.