Sleep Cycle, a popular and highly downloaded alarm clock and sleep tracking app available for the iPhone, today announced a new Apple Watch app that introduces more features for an even better waking up experience. With the Sleep Cycle for Apple Watch, Sleep Cycle users can enable "snore stopper" and silent wake up options.
Sleep Cycle uses "sound analysis technology" to detect when someone is snoring, subtly alerting them with a silent vibration sent to the Apple Watch for a more restful night of sleep. The company says that this will "not cause you to wake up," but instead simply encourage you to change position and stop snoring.
Additionally, the app has a silent wake up function that taps you with haptics to wake you from sleep and avoid disturbing anyone else nearby. Sleep Cycle will also continuously track your heart rate average, providing data that you can revisit when you wake up.
Available from today, Sleep Cycle’s Apple Watch app release features a snore stopper, a welcomed added feature. In addition to the snore tracker, already available in the existing Sleep Cycle alarm clock app using patented sound analysis technology. Snoring is more likely to occur in certain positions. For example, sleeping on your back can cause your tongue and soft palate to collapse to the back of your mouth.
The Sleep Cycle snore stopper uses the silent haptics function of the Apple Watch to gently nudge your wrist when it detects snoring. The alert will not cause you to wake up. But it will have you change position without knowing it and stop snoring. Much like the old trick of sewing tennis balls onto the back of your pajama shirt. No more snore means better quality sleep – for both the snorer and to the delight of potential roommates.
Sleep Cycle on iPhone also uses the same sound analysis technology that tracks snoring to detect movement in an effort to distinguish different sleep phases and provide information on sleep length and quality. This information, which can be viewed on either iPhone or Apple Watch, is used to determine the best time to wake a sleeping person up in the morning, with the aim of cutting down on grogginess by waking people up during the lightest sleep phase.
Sleep Cycle on Apple Watch follows a few sleep tracking apps that have been popular on the App Store, including Sleep++ (which updated recently with automatic sleep tracking), Pillow, and AutoSleep. For Sleep Cycle, the app is free to download and has a collection of features for free, while other features can be added on with a "premium" subscription at $29.99/year.
Beddit is another well-known sleep monitor app, which was acquired by Apple about a year ago. Beddit's sleep tracking data is accumulated using a thin, flexible sensor -- sold for $149.95 on Apple.com -- that provides detailed sleep analysis in areas like respiration, temperature, movement, snoring, and more. Apple's acquisition of Beddit hinted at potential implementation of similar sleep tracking technology in a future Apple Watch, but as of yet the company has not launched a wearable device with built-in sleep analysis features.
Sleep Cycle is available to download for free on the App Store [Direct Link].
Mitchel Broussard contributed to this report.
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