So, for the past month, I’ve been using Apple’s new sleep tracker, Sleep Score, which has received fairly mixed reviews. So, how is it actually? Well, let’s talk about it.
Apple Sleep Score Compatibility and Setup
Apple Sleep Score released 1 month ago alongside watch OS 26 to all Apple Watches Series 6 and newer. So, if you have any of the following Apple Watches on your screen, you can use Sleep Score.
To enable your sleep score, grab your iPhone and under the Apple Watch app, go to sleep and enable track sleep with Apple Watch. After that, wear your watch to bed and leave it on as you sleep. The next morning, press the dial on the watch and then scroll down until you see sleep where you’ll see your sleep score.
How Sleep Score Calculates Your Results
The sleep score is a number ranging from 1 to 100 that reflects how well you slept that night, which when you press the eye icon, you can see the different categories totaling 100, including your sleep duration, bedtime, and interruptions. Duration weighing 50% of the score, bedtime, and interruptions 20%.
For duration, if you didn’t sleep around the general optimal 8 hours for the night, your score goes down. For bedtime, if you went to bed fairly late relative to your set bedtime in your watch, your score goes down. And for your sleep interruptions, if you wake up multiple times for a certain duration of time in the night, your score goes down. And that is your sleep score in a nutshell.
Three factors totaling 100, which honestly is very simple for this app. But there’s still a bit more hidden within. Leaving that section by pressing the X up top puts you into the more detailed sleep assessment which shows your awake REM core and deep sleep times. And below that, your total sleep duration and then how you compare it to the last 2 weeks and finally your bedtime and wake time reminders for what you set when you got the watch. And that is the extent of the sleep app.
The Reality of Sleep Tracking Accuracy
But here’s the thing. I’ve had days when I got nearly a perfect sleep score and yet when I woke up I felt absolutely exhausted and that’s because this app only tells one half of the story.
The biggest issue with the current sleep tracking methods and sleep science as a whole is that unless you have wires hooked to your head and body, the accuracy of your sleep tracking will be solely based on external factors and some internal factors such as how often you move while in bed, your heart rate, your body heat, etc. So because of that, sleep score and many other sleep trackers generally speaking might tell you that you slept well, but in reality what they’re actually saying is it seemed you slept well.
Why Sleep Hygiene Matters
Is this a giant revelation for me? No, not at all really. When Apple announced the new sleep score, it seemed too simple to assess your sleep quality. And to an extent that’s true, because it is hard to judge how well you slept. You could sleep for 10 hours, way more than the suggested eight, and yet feel way worse than if you slept for six. It just really depends. And that’s never a good answer to hear, especially for someone like me who bought the Apple Watch for the sleep tracking among other features.
But I don’t think this really is a negative at all, honestly. First, the Apple Sleep app as a whole is actually really good. You can see the different stages of sleep you’re in. So you can make your own personal judgment on your sleep quality. And the sleep score, while simple, still does provide you with a good amount of information regarding variables you can optimize for better sleep.
For instance, it is important to sleep at the same time every night. That consistency tells your body that it’s time for bed and so you can get into some sort of flow state more easily even with sleep. So bedtime factor is vital. For duration, it is really important to aim for the optimal sleep duration. That may depend on you, but for a majority of us, 8 hours would be ideal. And finally, it is super important that we don’t experience interruptions with our sleep. If we do, that sleep quality will by nature not be as high.
Final Thoughts on Apple’s Sleep Tracking
So, the sleep score really is a way for you to figure out your sleep hygiene, specifically factors that you can improve on relatively easily. And once I was able to optimize those and achieve super high sleep scores, I could assess how well-rested I actually felt. If I didn’t feel well rested after that near-perfect sleep score, well, that means something else was going on under the hood, which often times was the case.
So, I wouldn’t necessarily write off the sleep score at all. Rather, I’d consider it as step one in the multi-step process of attaining that perfect sleep, which will come with both proper time and inward assessment, such as cutting down stress and eating earlier in the day, as a couple of suggestions I managed to pull off. Is it a miracle app that will tell you everything about your sleep? No. But it does get the ball rolling for you to make your own adjustments to a healthier lifestyle.
So, that was my assessment of the Apple Sleep Score. It’s been a month and I’ve learned a lot about my body through using the Apple Watch. I’m incredibly grateful for it and can’t wait to see what else I can learn and teach you all about. My name is Cirus. It’s spelled like cyc rooster. Just take out the tur. Thank you very much for reading and have a wonderful day. Peace. But I’m so frustrated.
