Sleep Disorders Healthy Sleep Habits Review of Sleep Cycle App: Tracking Movement to Time Awakenings By Brandon Peters, MD Brandon Peters, MD Facebook Twitter Brandon Peters, MD, is a board-certified neurologist and sleep medicine specialist. Learn about our editorial process Updated on May 31, 2022 Medically reviewed by Keri Peterson, MD Medically reviewed by Keri Peterson, MD Facebook LinkedIn Twitter Keri Peterson, MD, is board-certified in internal medicine and operates a private practice, Age Well, in New York City. Learn about our Medical Expert Board Fact checked by Angela Underwood Fact checked by Angela Underwood LinkedIn Angela Underwood's extensive local, state, and federal healthcare and environmental news coverage includes 911 first-responder compensation policy to the Ciba-Geigy water contamination case in Toms River, NJ. Her additional health-related coverage includes death and dying, skin care, and autism spectrum disorder. Learn about our editorial process Print One of the most popular of the sleep-related apps (or applications) for iPhone, Sleep Cycle works by tracking your movements during the night in order to perfectly time your morning awakening. This app has some pros and cons. LaylaBird / Getty Images How Sleep Cycle Works Sleep Cycle relies on your smartphone's accelerometer to monitor movement. The idea is that you place your smartphone near you in bed and that it will register movements. When you are in deeper sleep, especially REM sleep, it will document this stillness. When you are restless towards morning, drifting into lighter stages of sleep, it will seize on this wakefulness to alert you to get up for the day. Pros The interface of the app is slick. There are four tabs of controls and information for the iPhone version: Alarm, Statistics, Trends, and Settings. There are instructions on how best to place your phone and use the app. Under settings, you can choose an alarm sound (including a favorite song) and set your snooze options. You select a 30-minute period that you wish to awaken during. Then, each night after using it, it creates a summary on the Statistics page that includes a hypnogram (showing sleep stages) as well as your bedtime, wake time, and total and average sleep time. The Trends tab will let you review your sleep quality for various periods (days, weeks, and months). It even offers a comparison to others in your country (as well as the countries with the lowest and highest sleep qualities). There are many graphs, tracking: Sleep qualityTime you go to bedTime in bedTime you woke upSnoringIncreased sleep qualityDecreased sleep qualitySleep quality affected by air pressuresSleep quality affected by the moonActivity (steps)Sleep quality affected by activity (steps)Heart rate (bpm)Sleep quality per day of the weekTime in bed per day of the weekOverview (total nights, total time in bed, the average time in bed, shortest night, longest night, best night, and worst night) It also has options for sharing this information by email, Twitter, and Facebook. Additional features are unlocked and available with the Premium version, including: Online backupSleep aid (emits a soothing sound to help you fall asleep)Sleep notes (help you track how different activities, such as drinking coffee or working out, affect your sleep quality)Wake up mood (prompted upon awakening and saved)Weather (shows today's weather upon awakening)Heart rate (uses color changes in the tip of your finger to measure)AirPlay (alarm sound can play through Airplay speakers)Philips Hue (can use your linked lights to wake you)RunKeeper (connects to the app to track activity) Sleep Cycle is accurate at tracking the consistency of your sleep schedule. It's similar to documenting your sleep patterns with a sleep diary and monitoring it with an actigraph. At a cost of 99 cents, though, it's much less expensive than actigraphy. Cons The Sleep Cycle app does have some drawbacks. Battery drain: In order to function, the program must run overnight and this will slowly drain your battery. Although it will no doubt vary with your battery's age, it drained mine by 20% over 8 hours. The instructions recommend that you keep your phone plugged in, which could present a choking hazard should you become wrapped in the cord (though this risk is admittedly low). Movements of others: The accelerometer will pick up any movements, including potentially those of bed partners or pets. Sleep disruption: It brings your phone into the bedroom, and unless you put the phone in airplane mode, you may be bothered with calls, texts, and alerts throughout the night. Inaccuracies: The sleep cycle hypnogram (for which the app is named) does not appear to be accurate. If you have a soft mattress pad or other bedding, the accuracy will suffer even more because movements will be missed. Early waking: Setting a 30-minute window in which to have my alarm go off often left me getting less sleep than I desired. I would pick the later time to be the time when I absolutely had to wake up. More often than not it would awaken me earlier, which left me with less sleep than I had desired. I never really felt that I awakened more refreshed because of the perfectly timed alarm clock. Increased awareness: In general, having the phone in bed also made me more conscious of being awake or asleep, and this seemed to fragment my sleep. A Word From Verywell Therefore, though Sleep Cycle is an exciting development in inexpensive technology that may help us to monitor our sleep, it seems that it is really only accurate to track your bedtime and wake time. It should not be used as an alternative to more sophisticated sleep studies. There are a lot of problems with its use, which give it a limited utility, and I would not recommend it for these reasons. 7 Diagnostic Tests for Sleep Disorders 4 Sources Verywell Health uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy. The New York Times/Wirecutter. The Best Sleep-Tracking App. Nam Y, Kim Y, Lee J. Sleep monitoring based on a tri-axial accelerometer and a pressure sensor. Sensors. 2016;16(5):750. doi: 10.3390/s16050750 Sleep Cycle. How Sleep Cycle works. Zibrandtsen IC, Hernandez C, Ibsen JD, Kjaer TW. Event marker compliance in actigraphy. J Sleep Res. 2020;29(1). By Brandon Peters, MD Brandon Peters, MD, is a board-certified neurologist and sleep medicine specialist. See Our Editorial Process Meet Our Medical Expert Board Share Feedback Was this page helpful? Thanks for your feedback! 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