How to control sleep with your Apple Watch

Something that many users miss about the Apple Watch is sleep monitoring. While other quantifying bracelets offer this feature as standard, the Apple Watch does not include it, undoubtedly due to one of its main limitations: the battery. The Apple Watch from its origin has had to be charged daily, and most of us choose to do it while we sleep. However, things change radically with the new generation of Apple watches, since both the Apple Watch S1 and the S2 allow you to squeeze your battery for two days. We explain how to monitor sleep with your Apple Watch.

Another routine to load it

The first thing is to change the routine when charging the watch, because to really be able to monitor your sleep in a more or less reliable way it is necessary that you wear it, so you will not be able to leave it at night on the bedside table. placed on its charging base. When do I charge it then? The ideal according to my tests is to do it twice: in the morning when you get up while you prepare to leave the house and at night, just before going to bed.. In this way, while you have breakfast, shower and dress, the watch will recharge and at night, while you are sitting quietly on the sofa enjoying your favorite series, it will also fill the battery. So you can wear the watch when it is really useful: throughout the day, monitor your activity and at night while you sleep.

Third-party applications

There is currently no native application on the Apple Watch that is responsible for monitoring sleep (my request for watchOS 4). But the App Store is full of them, some even free. We have selected the most interesting ones for you to try for yourself, although I prefer the first one: AutoSleep. Of course, let no one think that the data obtained is close to what can be achieved in real monitoring with specific medical instruments, although this is not necessary for most.

The app that gives more accurate results, and that even offers you the option of not wearing the watch, although obviously in that case the results are much less detailed. It automatically detects when you are going to sleep based on the movements of your iPhone and Apple Watch and uses all the data that the watch automatically collects to monitor your sleep, such as movement and heart rate. And all this without an application installed on the watch, so there will be no background activity that will kill the battery of your Apple Watch. It is really amazing and I think it deserves its price.

A free app that also offers very good results, without as much data as the previous one, but more than enough for many users who only want basic monitoring. It does install an application on the Apple Watch, and you must indicate when you go to bed and when you get up.

This application gives much more detailed data, although for this it is necessary buy an accessory that detects movement in our bed.