Apple Watch will add support for native sleep tracking with watchOS 7, tying it together with new features like Wind Down on iPhone and iOS 14. In new interviews following WWDC, Apple VP of technologies Kevin Lynch offered more details on the strategy behind the company’s implementation of sleep tracking with Apple Watch.
Speaking to the Independent, Lynch explained that Apple spent “a lot of time learning about the science of sleep” before adding sleep tracking to Apple Watch. The goal of Apple’s implementation is simply to help people get to sleep and avoid distractions before bed:
One of the differentiators between Apple Watch’s native sleep tracking app and third-party apps is the amount of data presented to users. Many third-party apps offer details on things like deep sleep and sleep stages, but Apple’s app forgoes that strategy:
In a separate interview with CNET, Lynch elaborated a bit more on the testing Apple did before concluding that the duration is the most important sleep data point to track:
Lynch also said that Apple wants to avoid causing people anxiety about the amount of sleep they get but rather providing recognition when the goals are achieved:
And of course, Lynch emphasized that privacy is at the forefront of Apple’s implementation of sleep tracking — unlike some of the competition.
To learn more about Apple Watch sleep tracking with watchOS 7, check out our full hands-on walkthrough. If you want to start sleep tracking without installing the beta on your Apple Watch, there are a variety of third-party apps that are well worth a try.
“And that takes a long time. So we’ve been working on this for a while,” Lynch says. “We treat the data that’s being collected on a user’s device with a high level of sensitivity around privacy. … Apple is not seeing your sleep data.”
