Insomnia Was My Frenemy—Until I Started Using the SleepWatch App

Insomnia and I are old friends (well, frenemies). It’s been my uneasy companion through college and grad school, marriage, two pregnancies, postpartum, and a pandemic. In addition to struggling to fall asleep, I often wake up during the night and can’t fall back asleep. Then, when I get up in the morning, I feel less than fully rested.

I’ve never been able to pinpoint a reason for my difficulties with sleep. So, in an attempt to understand more about what could be causing my sleep struggles, I tried SleepWatch, a sleep-tracking app for iPhone users. I hoped the app would give me some insights into how much sleep I was really getting, as well as how often I was snoring or talking during the night.

I was surprised at how much information I gleaned from using SleepWatch for a month. Read on for more about my experience with the app, from the first download to the last night of sleep tracking.

How I Got Started With SleepWatch

As I first began exploring SleepWatch, I learned it’s exclusively available via the Apple App Store for iPhone and Apple Watch. (Sorry, Android users.)

It can be used with your smartphone by itself or you can sync it with your Apple Watch. I don’t use an Apple Watch but found that the app worked very well and provided plenty of useful information while just using my iPhone.

The first thing SleepWatch asked me to do was to choose my goals for using the app from a multiple-choice list. Options included falling asleep faster, recording my sleep sounds, improving snoring and breathing, and optimizing my sleep and health, among others. I chose “to better understand my sleep” as my goal.

Then, I was asked to provide my gender, age, height, and weight, as well as to allow the Health app on my iPhone to access my data.

After setting up my account, I started exploring the app. The “Home” tab on the bottom left-hand corner showed me several features: one called “Sleep” that tracks your snoring and/or sleep, a section that aggregates sleep reports (I assumed from what the sleep tracker collects), an option to create a white noise mix, a collection of soothing nature images and sounds, and a sleep education library. Other tabs included “Today” where my latest sleep reports lived, “Updates” with my personalized recommendations, and “More” with monthly sleep trends, app settings, a help center, etc.

My first impression was that the app was well-designed. I can get easily confused and distracted by lots of bells and whistles or visually complex graphics, so I appreciated its sleek black background, clearly labeled buttons and easy-to-read font. It wasn’t difficult to find what I needed on SleepWatch or understand how to use it, which was refreshing.

How I Used SleepWatch

SleepWatch’s most central feature is its sleep tracker. Before falling asleep each night, all I had to do to use it was place my phone on the nightstand next to my bed, go to the “Home” or “Sleep” tab, and hit “Start.”

The app then tracked my sleep sounds such as snoring or tossing and turning (after I gave the app access to my microphone) as well as my sleep time (it clocks this when you turn off the tracker). If you have an Apple Watch, SmartWatch will also record information like your heart rate while you sleep.

Each morning, I swiped my thumb across the “Slide to Finish” bar to let SleepWatch know that I was, indeed, awake. Then, I answered a quick series of questions about my night, including how well-rested I felt upon waking, what time I tried to fall asleep, how long it took me to fall asleep, and how many times I woke up in the middle of the night.

I assumed there would be a few nights of trial and error before the tracking and recordings were accurate, but that wasn’t the case.

However, I didn’t necessarily find all of the morning questions helpful. It was hard to remember how many times I woke up each night or how long each night waking episode lasted. Perhaps if I had an Apple Watch, I wouldn’t have had to enter this information manually, which would have made things easier.

Interpreting the Data

After I answered the questions, SleepWatch compiled a daily report about my previous night’s sleep. It included information about my three-day sleep debt (aka when you get less than the recommended number of hours a night), sleeping and waking times, and how close I came to reaching my nightly sleep goal of seven hours.

Additionally, the app provided an overall SleepWatch Score that compared my sleep quality to that of other app users in the same age range and with a similar body mass index (BMI), since there is a correlation between weight and sleep disorders like insomnia.1 Under “Trends” within the “More” tab, I could view charts of my sleep trends on a weekly and monthly basis.

At first glance, I wasn’t sure what to make of all these insights. It was a lot of information to take in at once.

For example, under “Total Sleep Time Goal,” SleepWatch gave further information about the current American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommendations for nightly sleep for my particular age and the science behind why it’s important to get a certain number of hours of sleep each night.2 I appreciated the thoughtfulness of this information, as well as the medical journal citations that let me know it was evidence-based.

In particular, I didn’t understand why the SleepWatch Score was relevant. The app didn’t explain why it was important to let me know how I compared to other users in terms of sleep, so it seemed unnecessary.

At the bottom of each sleep report screen, I could also add “activity tags” about the prior day’s actions—like having sex, sunbathing, drinking alcohol, or fasting—as well as info about potential sleep disruptions like allergies or migraines. I didn’t notice any particular patterns that related to my sleep. However, this could be helpful for someone who suspects their diet or daily activities might be affecting their sleep quality.

SleepWatch Sound Tracker

SleepWatch’s sound tracker was another helpful feature. Every day, my sleep report gave my snoring a score, such as “none” or “minimal.” Then, I could listen to recordings of my loudest sleep snores or sounds. Using this feature, I found out that I don’t snore much, which was comforting to know—my husband sleeps very deeply and rarely wakes up during the night, so he’s never been sure of how much or how loudly I snore.

I recognize some people might not like that the app listens to you all night, but , that’s how it’s able to categorize and track the quality of your sleep (for example, snoring is considered a sleep disorder).3 That said, according to the app’s privacy policy, it doesn’t share your information unless you give permission, you can limit and revoke third-party data use, and you can delete your sleep sound records anytime you like.

For example, the app noticed that I went to bed at wildly different times each night and recommended that I set a consistent bedtime. Particularly with kids at home, it can be difficult to recognize your own inconsistency in routines, so I found these reminders helpful.

Naturescapes and Soundscapes

The app’s naturescapes—relaxing, visually immersive environments with accompanying sounds—were created to help you relax and unwind. The location options included space, rainforest, ocean, river, and campfire. They were beautifully designed and did help me calm down before bed. I liked being able to adjust the volume according to my preference. However, I was disappointed that there were only five available and that they could only play for 30 minutes at a time.

I was more impressed with the app’s white noise composer.

There was a wide variety of options, and I liked that I could layer several sounds on top of one another. I like falling asleep to the sound of rain, so I was excited that there were several kinds of rain sounds to choose from, including heavy rain, umbrella rain, and fountain rain.

SleepWatch Education Library

I found SleepWatch’s sleep education library (near the bottom of the “Home” screen) much more helpful than I expected. Over the years, I’ve used many different mental health and meditation apps. Several had blogs or resource libraries, but I’ve never found them very useful.

They also included sleep statistics gathered from SleepWatch users, which made them even more insightful.

Pros and Cons

SleepWatch’s clean, simple app interface made it easy to start using the sleep tracker, and I enjoyed getting my customized recommendations each day. Still, there were some downsides—such as the free version being very limited in scope.

Final Thoughts

My experience with SleepWatch was generally positive. It was easy to jump in and start tracking my sleep right away. That’s always important to me—I don’t like spending too much time bogged down in trying to learn the ins and outs of a new app.

For example, I sleep much more consistently when I try to go to bed at the same time every night. I don’t think I would have realized how wildly my bedtime routine varied from night to night without the help of the tracker. I also appreciated the snoring and sleep sound tracker, which was user-friendly and provided helpful, evidence-based insights. And the nature scapes and white noise composer were a nice touch, making the app more soothing and pleasant to use before bed.

That said, SleepWatch isn’t for Android users, and the free version doesn’t include many features. You’ll have to buy a premium subscription to get the most out of the app. And some of the features listed on the SleepWatch website, such as the tracking and analysis of blood oxygen levels during sleep, are (understandably) only available for Apple Watch users.

While I still found the app useful, the experience may be significantly heightened if you can sync it to your Apple Watch.