6 new things about the Apple Watch Sleep app

Sleep app on Apple Watch

Kevin Lynch, Apple’s Vice President of Technologies spoke with charming UK writer, David Phelan at The Independent to discuss the upcoming Sleep app that will be available in Apple Watch with watchOS 7.

What did we learn?

1. It took a lot of work

Lynch confirmed the company has worked for a long time on the feature. That seems true given Apple acquired Beddit in 2017 – clearly they wanted to make a system that works.

2. It aims at habits

Apple hasn’t just thought about tracking sleep, it has also put time into tweaking habits. The Sleep app lets you choose a bedtime and the whole system will then try to get you to bed on time, it will even set sleepy night time light settings using Homekit and play gentle music. The Apple Watch screen will also get dimmer.

3. Which lead to behavior modification

“We can use some of these moments to help them so they can shift their focus more towards going to sleep. The way we did this was we built something called Wind Down,” Lynch said.

Like so many of Apple’s health solutions, much of what this one does is focused on behaviour modification – the system even congratulates you for meeting your own sleep goals.

4. When you sleep it tracks the way you move, but not brain waves

Once you get to sleep Apple Watch will track your movements using the accelerometer and will also track breathing and heart rate. That way the system can track the duration of your sleep. But it doesn’t really track quality as Lynch said doing so is difficult when the device doesn’t read your brain’s electrical signals.

5 And tries to wake you gently, with a gentle message

Set the Watch to silent and it will wake you gently by tapping on your wrist. And then gives you a special “Good Morning” message on screen.

6. And a public beta

Apple will make this new feature available as a public beta starting in July.

Please follow me on Twitter, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.