Apple Watch sleep tracking is too keen to please. Here’s why I want it to be meaner to me
Although Apple Watch sleep tracking promises better habits, its relentlessly positive scores too often feel like flattery rather than meaningful feedback
Because I’m a glutton for punishment, I’ve been wearing an Apple Watch to bed for three months. I should explain. My relationship with Apple’s wearable computer is complicated when it comes to health tracking. A few years ago, I lost my Apple Watch rings streak and it annoyed me to the degree my exercise routine never fully recovered. It’s also why I reckon being able to pause your rings is the best watchOS feature of recent years. Apple Watch sleep tracking? Not so much.
I did, though, like the idea of taking stock of my shut-eye. And today’s wearables have all kinds of clever sensors designed to recognise when you’re in various stages of sleep. (Or if you’re very much not asleep because the stupid foxes outside have started screaming at each other again, making everyone in your vicinity think a horrible murder is taking place.)
Apple being Apple, all this is packaged up into fancy numbers and graphs you can flick through the following morning, having bounded out of bed after a perfect eight hours. After gazing at the stats, you can then resolve to do even better the following night.
At least, that’s the theory.
Midnight spoil
For me, sleep tracking has been… sub-optimal. Admittedly, I am terrible at going to bed when I should. I’ll faff and procrastinate. I’ll read ‘just one more’ chapter or article. Or decide that this totally essential YouTube video about the most arcane and niche retro-gaming nerdery absolutely can’t wait until morning.
The Apple of old – the ‘rings streak busting’ one – wouldn’t have stood for this. But, at least as far as sleep tracking is concerned, we now have a more human Apple. Or at least one that prizes engagement. In my case, that means getting up in the morning and being patronised by a wrist computer. It’s a little like being a student winning a prize, despite attempting to eat a book rather than actually reading it. Because, hey, you tried.
The most common phrase I see within Apple Watch sleep data is “You slept really well last night”, often alongside “thanks to getting to bed on time”. The snag: I often didn’t. As in, didn’t sleep really well. And certainly didn’t get to bed on time.
40 97 winks
When I dig deeper into the data, it confirms what I already know. I go to bed too late. I often don’t get enough sleep. The averages, displayed in stark numbers, are perhaps useful. What’s less helpful is getting a score like 97%. Because – and correct me if I’m wrong – I’m fairly certain that’s a pretty high number. In fact, Apple calls it ‘Very High’.
Having scrolled back through months of data, I found Apple only vanishingly rarely dips down below ‘High’. It prefers to award scores that suggest I’m doing well. It’s decidedly odd when I emerge, bleary eyed, after a terrible night’s sleep, only to be handed 81% and a hearty congratulations.
Just twice has my sleep been rated ‘OK’. One night had associated data that insisted I was simultaneously in three different stages of sleep for over an hour, and so something must have gone wrong. The other involved me barely scraping five hours of snoozing and waking up eight times. (I also got a ‘High’ rating one night when I got just over five hours, apparently because I went to bed only a bit late – despite that being far later than my Bedtime setting that the sleep system apparently ignored.)
Sleep up
All of which makes me wonder how bad things would have to get for my score to drop below the mid-60s. Presumably, I’d have to go to bed at 4am, contrive to wake every six minutes, and get up at a quarter to six. Even that might not be enough.
Don’t get me wrong. I understand what Apple’s trying to do. Another Stuff contributor, Britta O’Boyle, is keen on the positivity and says high scores motivate her. And, clearly, Apple is reconfiguring its scores to my recent averages rather than an ideal. But, right now, it just feels like a different Apple robot. The old rings one was too rigid. This one wants to butter me up so I’ll keep using the system.
What I want is more intelligence and nuance. The Apple sleep equivalent of Gentler Streak might work. That exercise tracker provides an ongoing target range, based on recent habits, paired with contextual insights and friendly nudges. Although, knowing my luck, the equivalent from Apple might just result in angry Animoji barking stark lectures about “hitting snooze one too many times” and “watching that bloody YouTube channel again at gone midnight”. Every. Single. Morning.
So I’m torn: stick with Apple’s sleep tracking, ditch it entirely, or hope for change. I’d best sleep on it. Although no promises I’ll do that on time.
Craig Grannell
Contributor 
