Gina Johnson
Pillow is a sleep tracking app that offers both automatic and manual sleep tracking. The app provides a detailed, data-driven look at how you sleep, including sleep analysis and a sleep quality score. It also offers a range of editing tools to refine sleep sessions, audio recordings, presets, and notes for a more accurate sleep tracking experience. The app supports Apple Watch, iPhone, and iPad, with the Apple Watch handling sleep analysis and haptic-based alarms, and the iPhone taking care of audio recordings, alarms, and the playback of sleep aid content.
| Characteristics | Values |
|---|---|
| Sleep tracking | Manual and automatic |
| Manual sleep tracking | Customizable presets, advanced features, and precise |
| Manual sleep tracking preset types | Alarm-based, duration-based, and no alarm |
| Sleep analysis | Sleep cycle duration, sleep time in each stage, disturbances, environmental noises, and times awakened |
| Sleep session quality score | Percentage |
| Sleep stages | N1, N2, N3, N2, REM |
| Sleep cycles | 90 to 110 minutes in adults |
| Sleep stages duration | Deep sleep in the first hours, REM increases during sleep cycles |
| Sleep stage N1 | Between wakefulness and sleep, muscular and eye activity present |
| Sleep stage N2 | Harder to wake the person asleep |
| Sleep stage N3 | Slow Wave Sleep (SWS) or deep sleep, no muscular and eye movement, no reaction to environmental stimuli |
| Sleep stage REM | High brain activity, hardest to wake from, muscles paralyzed |
| Sleep report | Comprehensive sleep report notification after a sleep session |
| Sleep report metrics | Sleep stage data, heart rate, and more |
| Sleep data editing | Editing sleep sessions, audio recordings, presets, and notes |
| Sleep data security | Local data storage, encrypted iCloud backups |
| Sleep tracking devices | iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch |
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What You'll Learn
Manual sleep tracking
To start a sleep session manually, open the Pillow app on your iPhone and Apple Watch. Access your alarm presets by swiping horizontally, then tap "Start" on the alarm preset you prefer. Leave your iPhone on the nightstand and keep your Apple Watch on your wrist. When the alarm goes off, press "Stop" on your Apple Watch. Reopen the Pillow app on your iPhone or iPad, tap the alarm icon, and tap "Start" again. Place your device on the mattress near your pillow. Reopen Pillow on your Apple Watch, swipe to access your alarm presets, and create or edit a preset as needed.
There are three types of presets available: alarm-based, duration-based, and no alarm. The alarm-based preset is ideal for those who want to set a specific wake-up time. This preset triggers an alarm at your chosen time and enables Pillow's Smart Wake-up feature, which wakes you up within a 15- or 30-minute window during your lightest sleep stage. The duration-based preset is perfect for naps or sessions with set durations. The alarm goes off after a predetermined period, which is the time you spend in bed rather than your actual sleep time. The "no alarm" preset is for those who simply want to track their sleep without an alarm.
Pillow's manual sleep tracking offers several smart features to enhance your experience. It analyses your sleep in real time and wakes you up during your lightest sleep stage, ensuring a smooth awakening. If you temporarily wake up during the night, you can tap the pause button to halt tracking until you're ready to resume. Manual tracking also enables Pillow's audio recording feature, which captures snoring and other ambient sounds. To enable this, place your iPhone on the nightstand and wear your Apple Watch while you sleep.
With manual sleep tracking, you can fine-tune your sleep data to perfectly reflect your experience. You can adjust session durations, merge sessions, re-analyse data, and edit audio recordings, presets, and personal notes. This level of customisation ensures that your insights are accurate and helps you make changes for improved sleep quality.
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Editing sleep sessions
Pillow offers both automatic and manual sleep tracking, with the latter allowing you to customise your sleep tracking experience through presets and advanced features. Editing your sleep sessions in Pillow allows you to fine-tune your sleep data, including session durations, adjusting specific segments, and merging sessions. You can also re-analyse data, edit audio recordings, presets, and personal notes.
To edit a sleep session, you can launch Pillow on your iPhone or iPad and tap on the alarm tab. Swipe to the preset you want to modify and tap the edit button in the top right corner. A dialog box will appear, allowing you to change the configuration. If you're using an Apple Watch, you can also edit presets there, although not all options may be available on the watch.
You can also edit the start and end times of your sleep session, either trimming or expanding it as needed. Expanding a session may trigger Pillow to recalculate sleep stages, provided there is sufficient Apple Watch data. When editing sleep sessions, you'll also need to specify how to treat the time between sessions, choosing between "awake" and "asleep". Selecting "asleep" will trigger a re-analysis, which requires Apple Watch data.
Pillow also allows you to edit audio recordings, which capture ambient sounds like snoring or sleep talking. To edit these recordings, navigate to the day containing the session you wish to edit, tap on the session to open its detail view, and then select the "Audio" tab.
In addition to editing individual sleep sessions, Pillow provides a Sleep Diary feature, which gives a quick visual overview of your sleep quality and duration. The Sleep Diary includes a Sleep Calendar, which displays a monthly calendar with purple dots indicating days with detected sleep sessions. You can tap on a day without any detected sleep sessions, and Pillow will automatically try to detect any sessions, provided you wore your Apple Watch during sleep.
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Sleep stages and cycles
Sleep is a very important function that allows our body to restore and repair. Each night, the human body cycles through two phases of sleep: rapid-eye movement (REM) and non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. The cycle starts over every 80 to 100 minutes, with four to six cycles per night.
REM sleep is the stage of sleep where most dreams occur. It gets its name from the way our eyes move behind our eyelids while we dream. During this stage, our brain activity looks very similar to our brain activity while we are awake. REM sleep typically makes up about 25% of our total time asleep. The first period of REM sleep usually lasts around 10 minutes, with each later REM stage getting longer. The final REM cycle may last up to 30 to 60 minutes.
NREM sleep is further divided into three stages: N1, N2, and N3. During N1 sleep, the body hasn't fully relaxed, but body and brain activities start to slow down with periods of brief movements. It usually lasts one to seven minutes. As the night unfolds, an uninterrupted sleeper may not spend much more time in N1 sleep as they move through further sleep cycles.
During N2 sleep, the body enters a more subdued state where body temperature drops, muscles relax, and heart rate and breathing slow. Eye movement stops, and brain activity slows, though there are short bursts of activity. Collectively, a person typically spends about half of their sleep time in N2 sleep.
N3 sleep, also known as deep sleep, is the final stage of NREM sleep. It is harder to wake someone up during this stage. Muscle tone, pulse, and breathing rate decrease, and brain activity has an identifiable pattern of delta waves. N3 sleep is critical to restorative sleep, allowing for bodily recovery and growth. It may also boost the immune system and other key bodily processes.
The amount of time spent in each sleep stage varies from person to person and from night to night, depending on factors such as age, recent sleep patterns, and alcohol consumption. The duration spent in each sleep stage also evolves as individuals age, reflecting a decline in the overall biological necessity for sleep over time. For example, newborns spend more time in REM sleep, while slow-wave sleep peaks in early childhood and then drops sharply in the teenage years.
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Sleep quality score
Sleep sessions refer to the manual sleep tracking feature offered by the Pillow app. The app supports both automatic and manual sleep tracking, with the latter allowing users to have more control over their sleep experience. With manual sleep tracking, users can choose when to start and stop their sleep sessions and customise their tracking through presets and advanced features. This enables a level of precision that automatic tracking cannot match.
The Pillow app offers three primary modes for manual sleep tracking: alarm-based, duration-based, and no alarm. The alarm-based preset is ideal for those who want to set a specific wake-up time, while the duration-based preset is perfect for naps or sessions with set durations. The no-alarm preset is for those who simply want to track their sleep without an alarm.
The app also offers a range of editing tools that allow users to refine every detail of their sleep tracking. Users can edit the start and end times of their sleep sessions, trim or merge sessions, update notes on their wake-up mood, and edit audio recordings. These features ensure that sleep data accurately reflects the user's experience and provides useful insights to improve sleep habits.
Now, onto the Sleep Quality Score. The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) is a widely used self-report questionnaire that assesses sleep quality over a one-month period. It was developed by a team of doctors at the University of Pittsburgh and published in 1989. The PSQI has since been cited in over 34,000 peer-reviewed articles and is used in both clinical and research settings to evaluate various aspects of sleep.
The PSQI consists of seven component scores, each ranging from 0 to 3, with 3 indicating the greatest dysfunction or disturbance. These component scores are then summed to obtain a global PSQI score, which ranges from 0 to 21. A higher score indicates poorer sleep quality, with a score greater than 5 suggesting significant sleep difficulties. The PSQI has been validated in multiple studies and has demonstrated the ability to discriminate between varying levels of sleep disturbances across diverse populations and contexts.
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Sleep calendar
A sleep calendar is a useful tool to help you keep track of your sleep patterns and make adjustments to your sleep schedule to improve your sleep quality. There are various sleep tracking apps and tools available, such as Pillow, which offer features like sleep session editing, audio recordings, presets, and notes to provide insights into your sleep habits.
Pillow's sleep tracking feature allows you to manually or automatically track your sleep sessions. You can start and stop your sleep sessions, choose when to take a nap, and tailor your sleep tracking through customizable presets. The app also offers advanced features, such as the ability to capture snoring and other sounds, haptic-based alarms, and sleep aid content playback. These features provide a detailed understanding of your sleep patterns and enable you to make changes for more restorative sleep.
Additionally, the Pillow app offers a Sleep Aid section, which includes guided sessions, meditations, and nature-inspired soundscapes to help you relax and improve your sleep quality. These sessions can involve visualization meditations, where you imagine calming images, or listening to tranquil soundscapes, such as the gentle sounds of nature.
To optimize your sleep schedule, it is important to understand sleep cycles. A good night's sleep typically consists of 5-6 complete sleep cycles, each lasting about 90 minutes. The number of sleep cycles you need depends on your age, with adults requiring 7-9 hours of sleep per night and babies, young children, and adolescents needing more. By using a sleep calculator, you can determine your ideal bedtime or wake-up time based on your age, daily commitments, and the optimal number of complete sleep cycles.
By utilizing a combination of sleep tracking apps like Pillow, guided sleep sessions, and sleep calculators, you can create a comprehensive sleep calendar that helps you understand your sleep patterns and make informed decisions to improve your sleep quality.
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Frequently asked questions
A sleep session is a period of sleep that is being tracked using the Pillow app. The app supports both automatic and manual sleep tracking.
To start a sleep session, simply launch the Pillow app on your iPhone or Apple Watch and tap "Start". You can also set up an alarm to start a sleep session at a specific time.
During a sleep session, Pillow will track your sleep data, including sleep stages, heart rate, and ambient noise. It will also provide a sleep quality score and a sleep report after the session is complete.
