How does Sleep “Waking up” event behave?

[JulianL]

I’m considering using the “Waking up” event within the Sleep subsystem as a trigger for a personal automation shortcut but I’m not sure of some details about how it works. I’m starting some experiments tonight but if someone knows the answers that would be great and would save some time and give extra certainty.

Imagine I have a sleep schedule set where I have set wake up time to be 8:00am every day with no alarm ever enabled. I have both an iPhone and an Apple Watch but I don’t wear my AW in bed so don’t do full sleep tracking. My question is what happens if I get up early or have a lie in and get up late? In fact with no alarm set it is rare that my actual waking-up time would be exactly at the scheduled 8:00am.

If I just can’t sleep and give up and get out of bed at 7:00am will the waking-up event (and hence my home automation shortcut) still trigger at the time specified in my sleep schedule (i.e. 8:00am) or will the system react to my first use of either my AW or my iPhone, detect that I am no longer asleep, and thus trigger the waking-up event early?

If I have a lie in then will the waking-up event still be triggered at 8:00am or will it be delayed until I actually get up and interact with one of my devices?

 

[AdrianaP]

Have you tried it yet? How did it go?

I haven't set any automation with the "Waking up" event but when I wake up early the iPhone continues to act as if I'm asleep, with the dimmed out simplified lock screen. In fact, it stays that way even if I interact with the iPhone which... doesn't seem very smart. So I'm assuming the automation would only go off at the scheduled waking time.

 

[JulianL]

Have you tried it yet? How did it go?

I haven't set any automation with the "Waking up" event but when I wake up early the iPhone continues to act as if I'm asleep, with the dimmed out simplified lock screen. In fact, it stays that way even if I interact with the iPhone which... doesn't seem very smart. So I'm assuming the automation would only go off at the scheduled waking time.

Oops. Sorry. I’m usually better at updating threads.

Yes, I tried it and sadly it is totally inflexible. The waking-up event always triggers exactly at the time waking-up was supposed to trigger as per the schedule. I got up way before my scheduled waking-up time this morning and when I unlocked the watch and phone at about 7:00 am they stayed in airplane mode so clearly no event fired to trigger my shortcut to automatically turn it off and then at 8:30 am I got a notification on my iPhone to say that the waking-up shortcut had just triggered (irrelevant by then because I had manually turned off airplane mode over an hour ago).

I’ve gone back to simple time-of-day triggers. I think what I might do for the morning airplane-mode-off is have it trigger at maybe 5:00 am but instead of the action being a simple turn-off-airplane-mode operation instead I will have it put up an OK/Cancel alert and then the turn-off-airplane-mode operation. That way whatever time I wake up (assuming it isn’t before 5:00am; not likely!) I will wake up to an alert message on screen saying “Disable airplane mode? - OK/Cancel”. If I hit cancel the shortcut ends immediately so airplane mode stays on but if I hit OK airplane mode is turned off. At least that’s how I understand it. I have that set up now so I’ll see what happens tomorrow morning.

 

[matrix07]

Time for feedback to Apple I’ll say.

The event should be trigger once you turn off alarm, turn off sleep mode or dismiss the welcome screen on iPhone.

 

[AdrianaP]

I get the logic - maybe you just checked your phone and went back to sleep so sleep mode is still active. Maybe they could add an option/setting for that?

I woke up an hour early last Sunday ("dom." on the screenshot) but didn't turn off sleep mode to see if it would figure out I was awake. My sleep data for that day shows a break when I first used the phone but then it shows I was asleep until my waking hour. So the first time I interacted with it, it realizes I woke up but not the following times.

Today ("sáb.") I also woke up an hour early but this time I turned off sleep mode. I still got the "waking up" screen at the scheduled time and on the sleep data it doesn't show any break at all, even though I was using the phone. I don't have an Apple Watch, I don't know if that makes a difference.

Time for feedback to Apple I’ll say.

The event should be trigger once you turn off alarm, turn off sleep mode or dismiss the welcome screen on iPhone.

Yeah I think I'm going to do that.

 

[matrix07]

I woke up an hour early last Sunday ("dom." on the screenshot) but didn't turn off sleep mode to see if it would figure out I was awake.

A couple of nights ago I also woke up early and checked my phone and it asked me something like “Looks like you’re awake. Would you like to turn Sleep Mode off?”. I tap Yes and it showed welcome screen. That should be when the event triggers.

 

[JulianL]

A couple of nights ago I also woke up early and checked my phone and it asked me something like “Looks like you’re awake. Would you like to turn Sleep Mode off?”. I tap Yes and it showed welcome screen. That should be when the event triggers.

Interesting. I've never seen that but then again I've only been playing with sleep mode for a few days. That certainly seems to me to be the simplest, most robust and most elegant solution.

I can see why it can't always automatically exit sleep mode on an unlock because some people might quickly check their phone in the middle of the night if they can't sleep or get up to go to the toilet so putting a simple message on screen seems an easy way to keep everyone happy. I wonder, if you had tapped no, you could have still done the unlock, checked messages etc, and then gone back to sleep with the phone still in sleep mode. I would hope that is how it works.

There is one other detail though. That message seems to cover the waking early scenario but how about the lie-in scenario where presumably the user hasn't set a wake-up alarm (my case) or simply ignores the alarm when it goes off? There it would be possible to leave the message on screen so if I have an 8:00am wake-up set but only get up at 9:00am I would wake to that same “Looks like you’re awake. Would you like to turn Sleep Mode off?” message rather than waking up and finding that the system had taken me out of sleep mode an hour earlier. I'm not sure if that behaviour would upset people that wanted sleep to end automatically and the message would annoy them but if that was the case for too many people maybe Apple could have that as a toggle-option or, since Apple doesn't like too many options, maybe make the lie-in behaviour dependent on whether the sleep schedule has an alarm set; if it does then automatically come out of sleep when the alarm goes off and if it doesn't, hence more likelihood that the user is prepared to sleep beyond the scheduled wake-up time, use the message to detect the end of sleep mode that day.

I'll mull things over for a few more days and do a few more experiments but I think this is definitely something I'll be suggesting to Apple as well. For me at least it would make events from the sleep subsystem way more flexible and useful when scheduling things I want to happen overnight and would make the tracking of how long people were actually sleeping for way more accurate for people who didn't wear an Apple Watch overnight and tracking sleep even with just an iPhone is one of the core features of the Sleep subsystem after all.

 

[AdrianaP]

A couple of nights ago I also woke up early and checked my phone and it asked me something like “Looks like you’re awake. Would you like to turn Sleep Mode off?”. I tap Yes and it showed welcome screen. That should be when the event triggers.

Did you have an alarm set for that day? That message never appeared to me but the only days that I woke up before the scheduled time I didn't have any alarms set so that may be it. I'm going to try that next weekend. If the message pops up I might just set a silent alarm (if that's even possible) for the weekends. Or change my waking time since I've been waking up earlier than expected!

There it would be possible to leave the message on screen so if I have an 8:00am wake-up set but only get up at 9:00am I would wake to that same “Looks like you’re awake. Would you like to turn Sleep Mode off?” message rather than waking up and finding that the system had taken me out of sleep mode an hour earlier. I'm not sure if that behaviour would upset people that wanted sleep to end automatically and the message would annoy them but if that was the case for too many people maybe Apple could have that as a toggle-option or, since Apple doesn't like too many options, maybe make the lie-in behaviour dependent on whether the sleep schedule has an alarm set; if it does then automatically come out of sleep when the alarm goes off and if it doesn't, hence more likelihood that the user is prepared to sleep beyond the scheduled wake-up time, use the message to detect the end of sleep mode that day.

I'll mull things over for a few more days and do a few more experiments but I think this is definitely something I'll be suggesting to Apple as well. For me at least it would make events from the sleep subsystem way more flexible and useful when scheduling things I want to happen overnight and would make the tracking of how long people were actually sleeping for way more accurate for people who didn't wear an Apple Watch overnight and tracking sleep even with just an iPhone is one of the core features of the Sleep subsystem after all.

When I wake up past my waking time I really like seeing the bright screen with "Good morning" and the weather info, I don't mind at all that it has taken me out of sleep mode earlier. But I haven't set any events with the waking up event yet so I see how that message would be helpful for those who have.

Yeah I know with just the phone there's not much to expect regarding sleep data but I at least expect the phone to know that if I'm actively using it then I'm awake.