Best Sleep Tracker App to Monitor and Improve your Sleep Quality

Problems with falling asleep affecting more and more people. This disease is slowly becoming a serious civilization disease, affecting women and men of all ages – including children and adolescents. So why is it getting harder and harder for us to fall asleep? What is the risk of light or short sleep? Does hard and strong sleep affect our health, well-being, and ability to perform work? Yes, of course. One way to improve the quality and hygiene of sleep is through the best sleep tracker app designed for smartphone installation.

How long should a good night’s sleep be?

To better understand and understand the very important role that sleep plays in our body, we need to understand what sleep is and how many hours of sleep are appropriate for each of us. For decades, the dream has fascinated scientists who conduct numerous studies and experiments on it. As a result, it was found out how many hours of sleep we need depending on our age.

Check how many hours you should sleep in a day.

• Newborn – from 14 to 17 hours,
• Baby – from 12 to 15 hours,
• Pre-school child – approx. 10 hours,
• School child – approx. 9 hours,
• Teenager – approx. 8 hours,
• Adult – up to 6 to 8 hours,
• An older man – from 6 to 7 hours.

Unfortunately, we sleep far too little than we should. Additionally, our sleep is shallow, often interrupted, and the body’s position during sleep does not always guarantee regeneration and effective rest. It is related to our daily work and lifestyle, a lot of responsibilities, stress, inappropriate eating habits, and ignorance of sleep hygiene. The sleeping application installed on the phone allows some of these threats to be effectively eliminated, providing us with a better quality of night sleep.

What is a sleep tracker app?

It is a special program designed to be installed on phones with Android, Windows, and iOS systems. The applications can be downloaded for free from Playstore and installed on your phone in seconds. The way of using them is very simple and intuitive so that everyone can handle them. Depending on the type of application, they can use the accelerometer or connect it to smart watts.

How does the sleep tracker app work?

The sleep tracker application has two important tasks to fulfill. The first is to help you fall asleep, and the second is to provide us with a sufficiently long and strong sleep so that we wake up in the morning perfectly refreshed.

• Sleep aid – Like a sleep monitoring app can make it easier to fall asleep? It turns out to be fantastic in its simplicity and reliability. Did you fall asleep while watching a movie? Certainly yes, and more than once. And while listening to music in the evening? Also yes? Us too! By launching the sleep application when you go to bed, a short video, usually about 2.5 minutes long, with a delicate musical background will be displayed on the phone screen. The movie is not an action movie but a nerve-calming clip. It can depict lazy flowing water, the rustle of trees, a flower swaying in the wind, or other blissful views. Watching a short film like this, we don’t have to focus on it. Nothing will happen there that might require our attention and concentration. And that’s what’s beautiful about it. You can look at the screen and turn off your thinking. Thus, we create the best conditions for falling asleep. Soft music in the background only adds to this feeling.
  
• Sleep control – In the first part of this text, we explained how sleep works and what the phases of sleep are. So we know that during night sleep, there maybe 4 or 5 cycles of the NREM and REM phases. The more there are, the better for us. The job of a sleep monitoring app is to prevent it from being interrupted – for example, by alerting you loudly about an email or lighting up your screen. The night sleep application silences all notifications, reminders, and other phone reactions that may cause us to wake up. At the same time, a sleeping application also manages our alarm clock. The standard sound of the alarm clock in the phone is replaced with a dedicated alarm that is supposed to wake us up smoothly and gently. It is also worth mentioning that the application alarm clock sounds in advance from several to several dozen minutes before the planned wake-up call to give us time to “recover.”

Smart sleep tracking app

One of the most interesting sleep monitoring applications is motion sensors, which every modern phone is equipped with. When we go to sleep, we just start the application and put the phone on the mattress. The motion sensors in the device will detect even the slightest change in position caused by our movement and change of position. We also remember that our body is relaxed in the deep REM sleep phase and does not move. On the other hand, the NREM phase is the shallower one in which our body moves and it is easier for us to wake up. This is when the application detects motion and can start the process of gradually waking us up. An example of such an application is eg Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock.

What’s the best sleep tracker app?

There are many different types of sleep tracker applications on the market. The ones that have the highest number of downloads and the best ratings are among others.

1. Pzizz – Sleep, Nap, Focus

The first on the list is Pzizz – a sleep tracker application. The program puts us to sleep by playing randomly selected sounds that are pleasant to the ear and have pleasant sounds and appropriately selected frequencies. A unique composition is created from these sounds, which each evening may be different from the previous ones. Pzizz allows you to draw and save your favorite compositions so that you can come back to them in the future. The way to wake up is very simple – it consists of programming the alarm clock for a specific time. The alarm will go off gradually, with soft sounds, to not scare the sleeping person. The Pzizz application running at night in the background also mutes the sounds of other notifications, preventing anything from disturbing our proper sleep.

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2. Nightly: Enjoy Healthy Sleep

The application is free to download and very easy to use. When we install it on the phone, we will download movies we like to help us sleep for free. They present idyllic pictures, such as flowers on a meadow, etc. Their characteristic feature is the blurring and sharpening of selected frames. It allows you to focus your eyesight on only one area of ​​the video, without the need to focus on other parts of the screen subconsciously. The films are approximately 2.5 minutes long on average, with soft background music in the background. You can also set the alarm with a suggested volume in the app. It is optimally matched to our hearing so as not to cause a sudden break from sleep. In addition, the Nightly application itself suggests the time of the alarm, which depends on what time we go to bed and turn on the application.

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3. Runtastic Sleep better

Another very interesting best free sleep tracker app. It can gradually wake you up with pleasant sounds in the first phase of sleep and provides an extensive tool for monitoring sleep and creating various types of statistics. Thanks to the graphs, we can check how long we have slept over a week or month and how our physical activity or other activities influenced sleep. As in other applications similar to this one, Sleep Better also uses an accelerometer built into the phone, so it should be placed next to your head during sleep, e.g., under a pillow. The phone can operate both from the power supply to the charger and from the battery itself. Sleep monitoring application– Sleep Better is especially liked by users of Apple iPhones and smartwatches. It allows you to communicate and exchange data with the “Health” application. The program built on the Runtastic Sleep better app can serve us both in the free version, displaying non-intrusive ads, and in the commercial version, in which the ads have been removed, and we get more access to sounds.

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4. Sleep Cycle: Sleep analysis & Smart alarm clock

A small and simple-to-use sleep monitoring application, most often downloaded for Android phones. The most important function of the program is to monitor sleep through the accelerometer built into the device and create statistics. We find out how long we have slept each night, in what phase of sleep we wake up, and we will get suggestions on what can be done to improve the level of rest. Sleep cycle is a simple sleep tracking application that allows you to set your alarms, which also work when the airplane mode is on.

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5. Sleep as Android 💤 Sleep cycle smart alarm

Another easy-to-use sleep tracker app works at maximum functionality for the first two weeks of the trial period. It offers an intelligent wake-up with an accelerometer and a large selection of nature sounds used as an alarm. An interesting functionality in this application is sharing the measurement results with friends and the need to confirm the wake-up call, e.g., by using CAPTCHA or sending an NFC tag. Why is it used? To avoid the situation in which we cancel the alarm clock and fall asleep again, being late for work or school. The application supports data exchange with Pebble smart watts.

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How sleep is divided – Sleep Phases

Common and mysterious knowledge is how night sleep is shared. Most of us have heard of what are known as sleep phases, but few people can explain and name them correctly.

• Phase I – NREM – this is the slow-wave phase of sleep. A slow movement of the eyeballs characterizes it. In other words, it is deep sleep, during which delta waves of the brain’s electrical activity appearing. This sleep phase lasts between 80 and 100 minutes.
• Phase II – REM – is the phase of fast eye movements. In this phase of sleep, dreams, or what we commonly call “dreaming,” appear. The REM sleep phase is characterized by maximum muscle relaxation, which is why our body does not move during this phase. This sleep phase lasts approximately 15 minutes.

Throughout the night, the NREM and REM phases cycle repeats in an adult 4 to 5 times. It depends on how long you sleep and your age. It is also worth knowing that the longer we sleep, the duration of individual phases changes. The last phase of REM sleep, which is rich in dreams, can last up to 40 minutes. As the last phase occurs in the morning, just before waking up, it is these dreams that we remember best.

Melatonin – the hormone responsible for sleep

The schedule of our day, habits, biological clock, time of going to bed to sleep. All this should be in close balance with each other that can guarantee us an effective sleep. Of course, this is only in theory. In real life, we usually go to bed late at night, around 10 PM or 11 PM. Meanwhile, at 9 PM, our body starts producing the sleep hormone melatonin. When its concentration increases, there is a feeling of drowsiness. It is worth knowing that melatonin is secreted throughout the night, on average until 7 AM. Due to the dysregulation of the biological clock, melatonin production may start, for example, from 11:00 p.m. and last until 9:00 a.m. For this reason, many people sleep best in the morning when it is time to get up for work or school.

What is the risk of lack of sleep?

The easiest way to answer this question is in one word: fatigue. But not only a sleepy person loses concentration. He cannot concentrate the tasks properly, does not think logically, and is very easily nervous, irritated and experiences outbursts of anger. But that’s not all. Lack of sleep also affects the body’s biology. There is a weakening of immunity. People who are permanently sleepy fall ill more easily, their appearance is not healthy, and their skin is tired and sallow. So it is in everyone’s best interest to get the best possible sleep. How can this be achieved? Among other things, by installing above sleep tracking applications on the phone.

Mattress hardness and sleep application

For those mentioned above and other sleep apps to function properly, the accelerometer built into the device must detect movement. Placing the phone next to your head is essential for this, but the firmness of the mattress is also important. It should spring under the movement of our body. It is recommended to observe how the application works during the first two or three nights and, if necessary, place it closer to or further from the head.

Sleep as Android App is a very useful tool that many people are skeptical about. We also had such an opinion about them until we decided to install the application on the phone and use it for the first time. Then we quickly realized how many advantages it has and how beneficial it is for our sleep.