Woman sleeping in her bed at home
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If you wake up tired or are concerned about the quality of your sleep, there are many apps to help.
According to Hannah Owens, LMSW, the best sleep tracker apps are the ones that help you understand patterns in your sleep habits. These apps use input such as sound, heart rate, bedtime, and wake time to give you a snapshot of the duration and quality of your sleep. Tracking your sleep can bring awareness to how much or how little rest you get, prompting lifestyle changes to improve your sleep. A 2019 journal article even found that some sleep apps can detect sleep-wake stages (how often you wake up in the night) and sleep-related breathing disorders similar to clinical sleep studies.1  Still, it’s best to use sleep apps to gather additional information, not as a replacement for medical advice or a clinical sleep study.

Many apps use data from wearable devices such as an Apple Watch to provide you with a “sleep score” (which tracks your sleep patterns) and create graphs that show changes over time. Some apps allow you to export your data to share it with your healthcare professional for follow-up. We looked at several sleep tracker apps to find the best ones and tried them all ourselves to see if they helped identify issues and improve sleep quality. We also consulted two licensed therapists—Amy Marschall, PsyD, and Hannah Owens—before compiling our top picks for the best sleep apps. Here are the ones we recommend.

Best Technology: Oura

Oura Ring Gen3

Key Specs

  • Pricing: Starts at $299 for ring ($349 for most recent model); $5.99 per month for membership (first month free) or $69.99 per year
  • Operating System: iOS, Android
  • App Store Rating: 4.6/5 (App Store), 4.4/5 (Google Play)

Why We Chose It

The Oura ring is a device you wear on your finger all day and night. This ring measures heart rate, movement, and temperature and relies on the variability of these measurements to identify the stages of sleep.2 A study suggests the Oura ring is 96% accurate when all of the data points it collects are recorded and used in combination with its sleep-tracking algorithm,3 which is why we chose it as best for technology. We also found the Oura app helpful because it gives an easy-to-read chart of different sleep stages each night and an overall sleep and readiness score each morning. It also highlights patterns and changes over time.

Pros & Cons

Pros

  • Uses multiple metrics to track your sleep
  • Syncs with Apple Health
  • Clear analysis of sleep patterns and easy-to-understand sleep score
  • Tracks patterns and changes in sleep over time
  • Small and easy to wear
  • Battery lasts for multiple days
  • User-friendly app with resources to help improve sleep
Cons

  • You must use the app with the Oura ring
  • Pricey compared to other devices
  • Need to remember to charge the ring

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