Sleep is an essential part of everyone’s routine. With the lockdown situation, there has been a rise in search queries related to “insomnia”, and “can’t sleep” for the months of April and May. To address this, Google has introduced a few bedtime tools to help achieve better sleep with the help of your phone.
While we are all familiar with Digital Wellbeing, a feature introduced in Android 10, is now a dedicated app. And the app’s new “Bedtime mode” is more useful than ever.
Google has introduced a few useful bedtime tools to help make sleeping and technology work together instead of against each other.
A dark room, and quiet are essential to start the sleep cycle. Bedtime mode (formerly Wind Down) in Digital Wellbeing, your phone turns off visuals and audio to help you sleep. With the help of Do Not Disturb to turn off notifications for calls, texts, and other interruptions. The addition of Grayscale helps fade the colors on your phone to black and white and reduce the chance of you staying up.
You can now schedule Bedtime mode, and even have it trigger automatically, or as soon as you plug your phone in for charge. Bedtime mode can also be added to your phones Quick Settings and is easier to reach than before. If you want to stay up a little longer, you can pause Bedtime mode and not interrupt the schedule in the app.
Sleeping and waking up at a fixed time (even on off days) helps your body set a steady circadian rhythm, and significantly boost the quality of your sleep. If you use Google’s Clock app, there is now the addition of a Bedtime tab. You can set your daily sleep and wake times here and make the first step to a steady sleep schedule.
Setting a sleep schedule and adjusting to bedtime habits with the help of Clock. It’s best to establish a wake-up time first in the Clock app and using that to decide the right bedtime schedule. Clock now lets you see your calendar for tomorrow and tell you how many hours of sleep you’ll get, letting you adjust your bedtime if needed.
To help with sleep, you’ll now receive a reminder before your bedtime and get the option to play sounds from a complementary app like Spotify, YouTube Music, Calm, etc. If you combine Clock and Digital Wellbeing, you can limit interruptions when in sleep. If you do feel restless and use your phone past bedtime, you’ll be able to see how long and which apps you used in that period.
The Sunrise Alarm & You
Instead of the traditional loud alarms, a gentler alarm tone helps wake you up more calmly. Using the Sunrise Alarm, you get a visual cue 15 minutes prior to your intended alarm. The tone can also be customized to a song you enjoy or any sound you prefer.
Exclusive to Pixel devices, and coming to other Android devices later in the summer, you can set a bedtime reminder while using YouTube. If you indulge in watching videos close to your bedtime, YouTube will now pause to push notifications alerting you about your bedtime. You can choose to extend your bedtime but this will be logged in your Bedtime Mode.
With the combination of Bedtime and Family Link, you can manage your family’s screen time, in-app purchases, app downloads, and schedule bedtimes for their devices. Setting bedtime schedules and adjusting it from your app for everyone in the Family Link. Bedtime will lock the devices in the family device when bedtime comes, but the device can still be used to call if needed.
With all these features in mind, Google has made it easier than ever for Android users and their families to achieve better sleep. The culmination of all the apps working together can help curb sleep problems and help families live healthier.
