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Apple Watch Series 4 Sleep Tracking
- Thread starter tromboneaholic
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Last night I changed things around and didn't charge my watch before bed, so it was off the charger being worn since the night before last.
Went to bid with 63%, and got out of bed 7 hours later with 54%, so 9% usage.
My usage seems slightly higher than the previous 2 nights. I wonder if it's due to a difference in how the watch calculates battery usage when it's fully charged, versus somewhat depleted.
in my experience, very few experience actually, i obtained different results always starting from 99-100%. sometimes 10%, other times 15-20%...
i'm thinking about turning app refresh in backgroud off, and see what happens. unfortunately AW doesn't let you know single apps consumption.. so i'll turn all off.
just wondering what i would miss with no app refresh in background... for example, if i set a reminder on the iphone, and the iphone is offline, will i get notification on the AW evene if i didn't ope the app?
EDIT: i mean, i set a reminder on the phone while it is online, then turn the iphone offline.. would the reminder synch automatically when i set the reminder or just when i open the app on the AW? in this case it won't syncronize provided that the iphone is offline (while it was online when the reminder was set). hope i was clear :-D
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Thank you!! I appreciate you sharing your experience with the S4. Seems like I just need to wait it out.
Until then I put the watch in airplane mode as well as turned off all the raise to options and woke up with 95%. A huge improvement over the first night.
not for me :-( lost 14% tonight in 8 hours with airplane mode... yours is 44 mm?
One thing I've been doing before bed is to use the dock, and force quit all the apps except for SleepWatch.
I have background app refresh turned on for everything and last night was the most battery I've used, 9% after 7 hours.
I might turn background app refresh off for apps I don't use, but I don't know how useful that will be since the apps aren't running.
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well, actually i don't understand what app refresh in backround does. i mean, i have always set it on off for iphone and never missed a thing... i hope that important things will continue to work, don't know.
Yes mine is a 44mm. I charged to 100 before putting it on, closed all apps but pillow, turned off raise to wake/Siri and put in airplane mode. Tonight I want to try the same thing with a different sleep app I’m more used to. I wonder if automatic sleep detection on Pillow if it’s better or worse than clicking a button for the sleep cycle app.
For the watch, I recall reading that background app refresh doesn't affect complications on the watch face. Apparently they will be refreshed even if background app refresh is turned off. For the other watch apps with background app refresh turned off, they need to refresh their data when you launch them, so they will be a little slower to launch.
By the way, AutoSleep and HeartWatch are the only third-party apps I have installed on my watch right now.
[doublepost=1540472099][/doublepost]Also, I might be wrong about this, but I believe that only apps in the dock should be using background app refresh. If they aren't in the dock, they refresh their data when you launch them
thank you for sharing your experience.
but, for instance, if you have refresh off.. would autoslepp track automatically your sleep (provided that it is set to auto detect sleep after a certain hour)? with on, i think it will do it regadless you have it as complication on a face or open in the dock..
if you turn off i suppose that it will work if you have it on the face (or maybe in the dock), but not if it is closed... just my hypothesis
Today, I was at 88% after 14:21 hours since last charge and 46 min of use.
@DaveyVigs glad to hear you are getting an improved battery life!
Regarding Background Refresh, I have a lot of apps installed on my Watch most all of which are disabled because they see little to no use. That probably means I could get rid of them but for now I'll leave them on. I only have only enabled: Activity, AutoSleep, Carrot, SkyGuide, SleepWatch, Weather, Workout and World Clock.
I've been in the habit of disabling them because of my experience with background refresh on iPhone. I seem to recall reading that apps set to background refresh as enabled had an impact on battery life so I didn't want that to impact battery life with Watch. I'm still not clear on whether or not background refresh has an impact on Watch battery life.
@tromboneaholic your experiences may prove they do not?
By the way, I found this article which may help some improve battery life and explain more about the various things we've been discussing, sleep apps aside.
https://www.macrumors.com/guide/apple-watch-more-battery-life/
@DaveyVigs glad to hear you are getting an improved battery life!
Regarding Background Refresh, I have a lot of apps installed on my Watch most all of which are disabled because they see little to no use. That probably means I could get rid of them but for now I'll leave them on. I only have only enabled: Activity, AutoSleep, Carrot, SkyGuide, SleepWatch, Weather, Workout and World Clock.
I've been in the habit of disabling them because of my experience with background refresh on iPhone. I seem to recall reading that apps set to background refresh as enabled had an impact on battery life so I didn't want that to impact battery life with Watch. I'm still not clear on whether or not background refresh has an impact on Watch battery life.
@tromboneaholic your experiences may prove they do not?
By the way, I found this article which may help some improve battery life and explain more about the various things we've been discussing, sleep apps aside.
https://www.macrumors.com/guide/apple-watch-more-battery-life/
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I think in my case because I'm force quitting apps from the dock, they aren't running in the background and refreshing. I bet if I left several apps running, background app refresh would have an affect on battery life.
I use autosleep and sleepwatch , they both seem good, but I like autosleep better. im 100% charged when I go to bed with my watch on and both of those apps thru the night, after 7 to 8 hours, I'm at 94% usually. I have a 44mm SS
I find AutoSleep to be pretty good at detecting when I'm asleep and awake, but I do hit the "lights out" button to let it know I'm hitting the sack. I'm not thrilled with the UI on the iPhone app, so I'm going to look at some of the others, like SleepWatch that @staggerlee41 mentioned.
From what I understand, the watch is recording the data it normally collects and saving it to the Health app, and the sleep apps are just reading it from Health.
My wife is using Pillow and AutoSleep, and she notices they both interpret the data a little differently.
thank you. but from health app, if you look under "show all data" of sleep analysis, it recalls autoslepp. I don't think apple what OS itself records sleep data if you don't have any 3rd party app. contrary to what happens for heart rate, where all 3rd party apps takes data FROM the apple watch sensors.
I mean, if you use 3rd party app for heartrate (e.g. heartwatch in my case) the data are the same of the ones collected by the default app of the watch.
On the contrary, sleep tracking may differ between apps and the app itself can give different results according to different settings (for autosleep you can set the kind of sleeper you are, normal, lot of movement, static etc...). So, i think the health data TAKES data from different apps, but how can choose between apps which one is the most valuable?
maybe tonight i'll try with different apps one..
i hope my concerns are well explained
[doublepost=1540548919][/doublepost]ah, of course the data relevant to heart rate are the same, and you already mentioned that apps interpret the sleeping data differently. my concerns is relevant to the fact that in health app you can select "sleep analysis" that shows sleep time and time spent in bed.
in my case these data are the same of autosleep (of course, they are taken from it), but what if you use two apps that interpret the data differently? which one of the two data source is chosen to be shown in health app?
I see what you mean. Which one does health use, or both, to record time asleep.
[doublepost=1540550053][/doublepost]I have an update to my battery usage:
The last time my watch was on the charger was Tuesday night, and I've worn it for 3 nights in a row without charging.
It was at 25% when I went to bed last night. After 7 hours it's at 13%, so 12% usage after 7 hours.
Tuesday night, when I started with 100% battery, I used 7% after 8 hours.
Wednesday night I started with 63% battery and used 9% after 7 hours.
Thursday night I started with 25% and used 12% after 7 hours.
It seems like my usage increased a little bit each night the further away I am from a full charge (at least for these past 3 nights). I'm not sure if my battery usages is actually increasing, or if it's just how the Apple Watch battery meter works. I notice when it's at 100%, it likes to stay there for quite some time before it starts dropping.
I'm going to see how long my watch lasts until it runs out of juice today, and see if that affects the calibration of the battery meter.
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Ok. So Pillow beats my old favorite iPhone app SleepCycle as that app brought my watch to 54% with the same settings enabled/disabled as I had for Pillow.
This is an interesting question.. the answer might be which ever one updates your health data last... I haven’t checked, but that would be my guess based on programming experience
To try to help clarify: movement and heart rate are always from the watch and these sleep apps use that data to calculate length of sleep and how long you were in bed. The interpreted/calculated data is what you are curious about being updated in the health app.
This is an interesting question.. the answer might be which ever one updates your health data last... I haven’t checked, but that would be my guess based on programming experience
To try to help clarify: movement and heart rate are always from the watch and these sleep apps use that data to calculate length of sleep and how long you were in bed. The interpreted/calculated data is what you are curious about being updated in the health app.
yes!
i think that i'll try to sleep with several apps open tonight (or in the next few nights), then i'll post the results! let's also see what will be the battery drain...
Last night's battery update: 94% upon wake, 9 hours 5 min since last charge. I had all apps removed from the dock so in theory nothing should have been in use during that time.
I haven't identified which app gets logged in Apple Health but I can say I'm using AutoSleep and SleepWatch and they do not conflict with one another in terms of recording data to their respective iOS apps. I haven't compared the data in Health to ID which one gets recorded. I've looked at the Privacy>Health settings in iOS and both are set to write data to Health. So I suppose you could turn one off if you find one of them matches your perception of the truth better than the other.
@tromboneaholic thanks for your post and plowing ground with your experiment. I'll be curious to see the results!
I haven't identified which app gets logged in Apple Health but I can say I'm using AutoSleep and SleepWatch and they do not conflict with one another in terms of recording data to their respective iOS apps. I haven't compared the data in Health to ID which one gets recorded. I've looked at the Privacy>Health settings in iOS and both are set to write data to Health. So I suppose you could turn one off if you find one of them matches your perception of the truth better than the other.
@tromboneaholic thanks for your post and plowing ground with your experiment. I'll be curious to see the results!