Third party sleep tracking app AutoSleep reached version 5.0 on Tuesday, introducing a slew of new features and improvements, including iPhone X support and live sleep tracking on Apple Watch.
With later models of Apple Watch benefiting from major improvements in battery life, many Watch owners now wear their device to bed. Despite this, Apple still doesn't provide a native sleep tracking feature in watchOS, which has allowed third-party apps like AutoSleep to step in and fill the void.
While AutoSleep can track sleep quality and duration using just an iPhone, one of the app's biggest draws has been its Apple Watch component. Up until now, users had to sync the app to their iPhone to review calculated sleep metrics, but with AutoSleep 5, the Apple Watch app can now automatically track sleep without needing any help from an iPhone.
With sleep independently calculated on their wrist, users have the ability to scroll through sleep quality rings, deep sleep stats, and recharge summaries using the Digital Crown or by scrolling with a finger.
The Watch-based Lights Off feature, which lets users track how long it takes them to fall asleep, has also been rewritten. The progress display now has muted colors for viewing at night, and shows how much time the user has actually been asleep versus time spent just lying in bed.
Back on the iPhone app, sleep detection is now considerably faster, while motion detection has been discontinued for users who wear their Watch to sleep, but remains an option for non-Watch wearers.
The information screens have also been unified, so instead of metrics and graphs being on a separate tab, everything now appears on one scrollable screen. In addition, sleep quality rings have been redesigned and are now more clearly labeled, making key information more easily available at a glance.
The sleep analysis graph has been moved to just below the sleep clock, and reveals different data points such as sleep zones and heart rate as the user scrolls. Elsewhere, the configuration and troubleshooting sections of the app have been modified to be easier to use, and AutoSleep now has additional share options for sleep recording notetakers and social media users.
In addition to iPhone X layout optimization, several other improvements have been made under the hood, according to the developer. More information can be found in the release notes for AutoSleep 5, which costs $2.99 on the App Store. [Direct Link]
