Apple to Add Sleep-Tracking Features to Apple Watch by 2020
Apple is said to be testing a sleep tracking app for a future Apple Watch, according to a new report today filed by Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
The company has been using the sleep-tracking feature for several months with testers at secret sites around its Cupertino, California, headquarters, according to people familiar with the work. If the functionality is successful in the testing stages, the company plans to add it to the Apple Watch by 2020, according to one of the people.
Rival smartwatches from the likes of Fitbit have long touted sleep-tracking capabilities, but Apple's watchOS has never offered a native sleep tracking feature. Initially, this was for good reason: battery life on the first Apple Watch rarely lasted beyond the advertised 18 hours, meaning the device had to be perched on a charging dock as you slept.
However, since the release of the Series 3 and 4 models, many owners find their smartwatches can last two full days or more on a single charge, which has led third-party developers to step in with sleep-tracking apps.
Future Apple Watch models could well have improved battery life, enabling users to wear them for longer and track time in bed. Alternatively, Gurman speculates that overnight sleep-tracking could even feature as part of a special new low-power mode.
Apple's iOS Health app already includes a tab for sleep analysis data, which is pulled from either the alarm clock function in the iPhone's Clock app or a third-party sleep-tracking app.
Apple has dipped its toes in sleep-tracking before. The company acquired Finnish startup Beddit, which makes a sleep-tracking sensor strip. Apple sells the product on its website under the Beddit brand and recently launched an updated version.
Popular Stories
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
Apple is set to unveil iOS 18 during its WWDC keynote on June 10, so the software update is a little over six weeks away from being announced. Below, we recap rumored features and changes planned for the iPhone with iOS 18. iOS 18 will reportedly be the "biggest" update in the iPhone's history, with new ChatGPT-inspired generative AI features, a more customizable Home Screen, and much more....
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
Best Buy is discounting a collection of M3 MacBook Pro computers today, this time focusing on the 14-inch version of the laptop. Every deal in this sale requires you to have a My Best Buy Plus or Total membership, although non-members can still get solid second-best prices on these MacBook Pro models. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Best Buy. When you click a link and make a...
Top Rated Comments
I really would not want to wear my watch while I slept any way.
And unless they are planning on either improving the battery life or shortening the charge time considerably.
The watch would be dead by mid morning.
-AE
My emails were not ignored.