We know it can be really hard for parents to get a good night’s sleep, but tech is here to help. We’ve found 3 great sleep tracking apps that can track your sleep, and help you build better habits to improve it. From waking up at your body’s natural wake time to figuring out what makes your snoring worse, these apps can be lifesavers for parents.
So, here are 3 great sleep tracking apps for those of you desperate for a better night’s sleep.
Related: 5 ways to use tech to help you (and your kids) get a better night’s sleep
My personal preference for a sleep app is an alarm that wakes you when you’re refreshed and well-rested, and that’s what Sleep Cycle (iOS and Android) promises. There are no wearables involved (yay!), and you can simply place your phone on your bedside table or on your bed. It will use your microphone or motion (respectively) to measure your sleep patterns.
You can set the time you’d like to wake up, and it will track your natural sleep rhythms to wake you during a light sleep phase, so you feel like you woke naturally. Not like the baby screaming while you’re in a dead sleep woke you. You can hit snooze, but it kind of defeats the purpose.
I love that the dashboard is simple and it doesn’t add on too many unnecessary bells and whistles that I don’t really need to worry about. And they even have a Power Nap spinoff app, to help you get the perfect power nap during the day if you need to catch up on some zzzs.
Related: More sleep tracking apps to help you get more sleep.
The AutoSleep (iOS) app is designed to work with your Apple Watch with almost zero effort. It’s easiest for people who don’t mind wearing their watch to bed, but even if you don’t want to wear it while you sleep, it will track your sleep based on when you took it off and put it back on. Of course, this is not entirely accurate because many of us toss and turn without sleeping once we take our watches off, but it gives you a general idea of your “in bed” time at least.
AutoSleep doesn’t have the alarm clock feature, which makes it less useful to me. But it does keep track of your “sleep credit” or “sleep debt,” so you can find out what’s the latest time you can go to bed and still be in your sleep credit zone. If you’re a real data nerd who loves analyzing info, this is a good app for you. If you want things straightforward and simple, it probably isn’t.
Related: Here’s what happened when I stopped binge watching and got more sleep
If you’re experiencing sleep problems caused by snoring, then the SnoreLab app (iOS and Android) is a good one to try. While it doesn’t give tons of data on your sleep itself — other than the amount of time it took you to fall asleep — it uses your microphone to record any snoring during the night and will give you a report on what your snoring looked like, from quiet to epic, in the morning. (Bonus: it also records any sleep talking, so you can have a good laugh in the morning.)
You can record different factors to your sleep-and-snoring issues, like alcohol consumption or use of an anti-snoring pillow. These help you track what’s working and not working as a snoring solution. The app is free, but you can pay for upgrades that allow you to use it over consecutive nights or see trends from your snoring solutions.
