Sleep Tracking

By all reports, Apple has been working on sleep tracking for at least a few years now — it began at least as far back as 2017, when Apple acquired Beddit — and it was about a year ago that we began to hear solid reports that Apple was working on bringing this technology to the Apple Watch in some way.

These reports have ramped up over the past year, even including evidence of a new Sleep app that leaked out in an App Store screenshot for Apple’s own Alarms app, suggesting that Apple has already been testing the feature for a while. There had been rumours that a basic version would arrive last fall, but obviously that didn’t happen, so at this point it seems very likely to appear in watchOS 7 and the Apple Watch Series 6, but it’s not yet clear how compatible it will be with older Apple Watch models; in the very least there’s going to be an impact on battery life since you’ll naturally have to wear your Apple Watch to bed.

To be clear, Apple’s acquisition of Beddit doesn’t relate directly to the watch, as the company actually made a sleep tracking mat, but it does give Apple the expertise (and quite possibly some of the patents) that will help it to pursue sleep tracking in the broader sense, and it’s also considering other innovative new sleep tracking products.