Sleep has a major impact on our health. When we don’t get enough of it, our minds, bodies, and moods pay the price.
Even if you log the recommended seven to eight hours of shut-eye each night, it’s possible you still wake up restless or groggy. That may be because while you are getting the quantity of sleep you need, your quality of sleep may not be as great.
Sleep quality is impacted by a number of factors. Some of these include environmental factors like light, temperature and noise. Maybe your mattress causes you pain that makes it hard to get comfortable. But your sleep can also suffer when you are under a lot of stress recovering from an injury.
Just like we count our calories and measure our steps, we can also manage our sleep right from our phone.
As it turns out, there are a number of apps available for iOS and Android that monitor and analyze your sleeping patterns. If you are interested in what really happens when you go to bed at night, check out our list of the best apps for sleep:
Apple IOS BedTime Feature
Apple’s Bedtime Feature, located within your iPhone’s “Clock” app, is a great starting point for tracking sleep. Although this is the barebones for sleep monitoring, this feature works by using your mic, accelerometer, and touch sensors to keep track of your nighttime activities. The dashboard reports hours slept, number and duration of sleep interruptions, and wake/sleep times.
Added bonus: the alarms within the Bedtime feature are way less, you know, alarming. They are actually quite pleasant.
Sleepbot
This “smart” sleep tracker works with Android and iOS. The app records your movement and sound throughout the night. Come morning, you can even listen to your sleep talk. But, its purpose isn’t only to playback your dream commentary. It actually uses the movement and sound data gathered to determine when you are and aren’t asleep.
Added bonus: Sleepbot’s “smart” alarm, with the help of its data, wakes you during your lightest stage of sleep. The result? You will wake up feeling the most-rested (as opposed to being woken up during deep sleep, which causes grogginess).
Sleep as Android
This sleep tracker might be harder to get the hang of, but it comes complete with all the bells and whistles. From smart wake up, snoring recording, binaural beats that help you fall asleep, and a CAPTCHA code that gets you out of bed, Sleep as Android might as well be as attentive as a new mother.
Added bonus: when paired with its wearable device (not required, but recommended), the app can even monitor your heart rate and breathing patterns to give you the most accurate sleep data possible.
Sleep Better
At first glance, Sleep Better appears to be any old sleep monitoring app. It tracks how long you slept and how long you spent in deep sleep, comes with a smart alarm to wake you up at the most optimal time, and collects historical data for you to analyze.
What’s interesting is that it tracks activities during the day’nicotine intake, alcohol consumption, or exercise’and connects them to your sleep analysis. The app allows you to tag these aforementioned activities and see how they affect your sleep ‘ removing the need to check other tracking apps like myfitnesspal or mapmyrun ‘ with zero switching between screens or button pressing required.