Apple Watch sleep mode, wake up before alarm

I had the same question and found this on another search, may be the answer: Tip: To exit sleep mode, first turn the Digital Crown to unlock. Then swipe up to open Control Center and tap .

I've been experimenting with how to best wake up before an Apple Watch alarm the past few days.

Basically, the best way to do it without having your sleep data discarded is to change your alarm to be five minutes from now.

You can do this by tapping the alarm time on the home screen of your iPhone and then hitting the button to change your alarm.

It will sometimes ask you if you're ready to wake up before the alarm, but this isn't consistent. Either way, your alarm will go off within 5 minutes and your sleep data will be kept.

Trying to turn off Bedtime mode by pressing the bed icon is still not advised. It will not always prompt you to end sleep mode and it will throw away your sleep data. There's either a race condition going on in the code or it only happens if your wake up time is within X minutes of the current time.

On the main screen, swipe up. Click on the bed icon.

You have to turn it off on your phone, not on the watch.

Go to the quick settings menu on the phone - (where you'd see the flashlight / wireless options) and turn off the night / alarm mode (little bed icon)

It will then ask you if you'd like to turn off the alarm, choose yes - the watch returns to normal operation and you do not lose your sleep data.

I just tried the advice posted to scroll up and tap the bed icon, I was immediately asked if I was awake. I said yes and kept my sleep data for the night. I’m not sure if I got lucky or Apple has addressed this, I’m on watchOS 7.2.

I am also experiencing this same problem. Has anybody (Apple included) discovered a fix or workaround for this bug?

The gist of the problem is that we (problem reporters) want to be able to use our Apple Watch "normally" if we wake-up early and then easily put it back into sleep mode when we are ready to return to our slumber time.

The "official" Apple answer is totally unacceptable. Apple tells you to turn, turn, turn, turn, turn, turn ... the Digitial Crown (as if you are using the remove water feature after swimming). First, this is way too cumbersome! I just want to press the crown or the side button (or a combo) and have the watch wake-up and let me do all the wonderful things Apple Watch allows. Second, even if you do that cumbersome method, then it does NOT last long. As the initial problem reported says, the minute you lower your wrist/arm, the watch goes back into it's sleep monitoring mode (with the dimmed, dumbed-down display) and you're forced to use the cumbersome (squeeze out the the water) method with the Digital Crown.

The replies indicating you should just scroll up the watch face and hit the blue-lighted, bed icon are partly right and partly wrong. It will bring the watch out of sleep monitoring mode; but, you will lose that night's sleep data!

In the interim, I got so frustrated with not being able to fully use my watch even after doing the "water squeezey thing" with the Digital Crown (which only lasts until you lower your arm) that I toggled off all sleep and "do not disturb" settings. This is a drastic workaround but at least I get a fully functional watch again when I wake up early (or don't go to sleep before the sleep mode trigger time).

Hopefully, Apple's software engineers either already have a fix (or are working on one) for a future WatchOS release.

Seasons Greetings,

Tony

To reiterate what's in this thread, and my personal experience:

• If you wake up early, turning off sleep mode on your iPhone will result in your sleep data being discarded. This isn't what you want.
• However, turning off sleep mode on your Apple Watch will result you in being prompted to end your sleep session organically and this will retain your sleep data as expected.
  • To do this, first turn the Digital Crown to unlock.
  • Then swipe up to open Control Center and tap . You'll see the prompt to end your sleep session in a moment. Just confirm that and your sleep data will be saved.
• Sometimes, just getting up early and using your Apple devices is enough to trigger the organic "end your sleep session" prompt, but this isn't reliable, so the best method is the Apple Watch one described above.

Thanks, Adam! Your answer here is definitive, and is the essential response for this entire thread!

Like you say: Sleep Mode needs to be disengaged on the *phone*, thus preserving the sleep data. (I’ve tried turning-off Sleep Mode via the watch, but it scrubs the gathered sleep data.)

Again, thanks mate. I hope other watch owners see your advice. For those that monitor their sleep, your guidance really is essential. I wake up early all the time!

Lee

Hello,

The Apple Support page doesn’t bring this answer. How do you say to your watch: I’m awake earlier than the alarm, you can exit sleep mode!

Hope you can help us, because that’s not a weird request.

Best,

Xavier

It seems this was never answered. We’re you able to figure it out? Sometimes my watch will ask me if I’m awake early and should it turn off the alarm. That’s exactly what I want but I have no clue what makes that happen since I’ve been awake before and it doesn’t ask

Please read back to the comment on why that’s not a good solution. The watch was designed to automatically detect and early wake up and ask to shut off the alarm. Turning off the bedtime feature does not tell the watch you’ve woken up, it turns off the feature and removes the data gathered overnight.

The other users in this thread are precisely right and this answer doesn't help.

When you wake up early, before your alarm goes off - SOME of the time the watch will notice and ask if you're up and want to cancel the alarm. If you say yes, you see your sleep data.

Some of the time the watch does not notice and you have to walk around for an hour unable to review your sleep data as the watch is still in sleep mode and turning off the sleep feature will erase the sleep data.

There must be an answer. Please actually help instead of posting generic links.

Also posting links to KB articles is NEVER helpful.

If we had the ability to look up this question and we end up typing in this thread - then trust me the answer cannot be found in a search.

We would rather find it, not type questions on a board.

TinkerTots wrote:

The "official" Apple answer is totally unacceptable. Apple tells you to turn, turn, turn, turn, turn, turn ... the Digitial Crown (as if you are using the remove water feature after swimming). First, this is way too cumbersome! I just want to press the crown or the side button (or a combo) and have the watch wake-up and let me do all the wonderful things Apple Watch allows. Second, even if you do that cumbersome method, then it does NOT last long. As the initial problem reported says, the minute you lower your wrist/arm, the watch goes back into it's sleep monitoring mode (with the dimmed, dumbed-down display) and you're forced to use the cumbersome (squeeze out the the water) method with the Digital Crown.

You should let Apple know you'd like to see something different here:

Product Feedback - Apple

Update to my last post - the Apple Watch method of turning off sleep mode is actually inconsistent.

This morning, I followed the same procedure and I was never prompted to end my sleep session and thus my sleep data was discarded.

There's an unpredictability with whether or not manually ending a sleep session triggers the "Do you want to end your sleep session?" message that results in recording your data. This is leading to a bad user experience since, at random, you will lose your sleep data if you wake up early and turn off the sleep mode on your Apple Watch or iPhone.

For now, I will try to not turn it off manually at all and see if that works better.

To be explicit, this was not my experience as described in earlier posts.

I would see sleep data be discarded, at random, when tapping the bed icon on both the iPhone and the Apple Watch. The experience was not consistent.

This may be a race condition in the application logic or a factor where some of us wake up way earlier than others so we’re not in the same threshold.

My workaround of changing the alarm time to the current time works well enough for me.

But I wanted to be clear that this issue happens at random whether or not the user taps the bed icon on their phone or on their watch.