While technology use can have a negative effect on your sleep, there is a way to harness it in order to improve your slumber and a new update to Apple’s iOS14 and watchOS 7 hopes to do just that.
Apple has updated its sleep tracking and introduced Sleep Mode and Wind Down in order to give you the best chance at a great night’s sleep.To use these features to the best of their ability, you have to set up your Sleep Schedule.
To do so, open the Health app on your iPhone and tap Get Started under ‘Set Up Sleep’. Tap ‘Next’ and follow the prompts.
Here you will set up your ‘Sleep Goals’, which is the number of hours you’d like to spend asleep as well as your ‘Bedtime’ and ‘Wake Up Times’. You can also turn on ‘Sleep Mode’ which turns on your ‘Do Not Disturb’ come bedtime and dims the Lock screen to limit distractions and protect your precious sleep.
The introduction of ‘Wind Down Shortcuts’ prioritises your relaxation before bed and allows you to add shortcuts that will help you unwind like your favourite meditation app or soothing sleep playlists. For those with the Apple Watch, you can also wear your watch to bed in order to track your sleep.
You also have the option to edit your ‘Sleep Schedule’ that affects the full schedule or just the ‘Next Wake Up Only’. When you select the latter option, the changes you made will only apply the following day and then revert back to your original Sleep Schedule.
You can also access your sleep history via the Health app which will tell you how you’ve been tracking. Based on your iPhone usage at night, Sleep on iPhone will track and chart your Time In Bed, which you can view by week or month.
Tapping ‘Show More Sleep Data’ will allow you to review your Sleep Duration compared to your ‘Time In Bed’ and ‘Average Time Asleep’.
You’re most likely on your phone a fair bit before heading to bed, so you may as well try to use this technology for the good of your sleep.
If you haven’t yet downloaded iOS14, you can do so by heading to ‘Settings’ then ‘General and Software Update’.
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