Apple Watch doesn’t record my nap.

Hello nowhereman473!

There could be a few reasons why your Apple Watch did not record your nap between 7 PM and 10 PM:

1. Sleep detection disabled: By default, Apple Watch is set to automatically track your sleep only during the nighttime sleep period. If you didn't enable the "Sleep Mode" feature or manually start sleep tracking, the watch might not have recognized your nap as a sleep period.
2. Sleep schedule inconsistency: If your sleep schedule is irregular or deviates significantly from your usual nighttime sleep period, the Apple Watch sleep tracking feature may not detect it as a typical sleep session. The watch relies on consistent patterns to recognize sleep periods accurately.
3. Sleep sensitivity settings: The Apple Watch sleep tracking feature has sensitivity settings that determine how it detects sleep. If the sensitivity settings are not appropriately adjusted for your sleep patterns or if you haven't customized them, it might affect the accuracy of sleep detection, especially for shorter or irregular sleep periods like naps.
4. Placement and battery: The accuracy of sleep tracking on the Apple Watch can be affected by the placement of the watch on your wrist and its battery level. If the watch is loosely worn or the battery is low, it may not accurately track your sleep or record the data.

To improve sleep tracking with your Apple Watch, consider the following tips:

• Enable Sleep Mode: Open the Watch app on your iPhone, go to the "My Watch" tab, select "Sleep," and enable "Sleep Mode." This ensures that the watch actively tracks your sleep during designated periods.
• Customize sleep schedule: Set a consistent sleep schedule in the Sleep section of the Watch app to align with your regular sleep patterns. This helps the watch better understand your sleep routine.
• Adjust sensitivity settings: In the Sleep section of the Watch app, you can customize the sensitivity settings for sleep tracking. Experiment with different settings to see if adjusting them improves the accuracy of sleep detection.
• Ensure a secure fit: Make sure the Apple Watch is worn snugly on your wrist during sleep. This helps maintain good contact and accuracy during sleep tracking.

Highest regards,

DX-7

I’ve been experimenting and found that defining a bigger sleep schedule IS the trick to detecting naps. You do NOT have to have it go into sleep focus mode at the beginning of the sleep schedule. I don’t even use sleep focus anymore. I just define a large sleep schedule (8PM-9AM) and go about my evening. If I nap in the evening, it detects it and classifies it as light/REM/deep. Same with my regular sleep.

There’s two side effects from doing this. First, if you nap in the evening, it assumes that your sleep started when you napped and your sleep efficiency may be horrible (because it looks like nap-awake-sleep). Second, it doesn’t write the sleep stage data to Health until the schedule is done. There’s a trick, though. If after waking up you toggle sleep focus mode on the watch (I turn it on, wait about five seconds, then turn it off), THEN it realizes that you’re done and it writes the sleep stage data to Health so that other apps can see it (if you use other sleep apps too - I use AutoSleep myself to complement the native sleep app).

Hope that this helps some.

Lamaree wrote:

After buying it, I found out the watch did not come with a factory sleep app.

One had to be purchased from the app store.

Utterly ridiculous. So, they lied.

When did you buy your Watch? Unless you have a very old watch, that's not true. Apple released a Sleep app for the watch in 2020. And it was very clear prior to that, had you read any of Apple documentation, it didn't exist.

They have since upgraded their software to include a sleep app.

But the watch still falls short in that it cannot detect naps.

That is not a feature that Apple has chose to add. You can certainly let Apple know your thoughts here:

Product Feedback - Apple

And, if that's an important feature to you, you still have the option of exploring third-party apps.

I’m posting this hair because I haven’t seen any others suggest it, but you can actually record naps with the Apple Watch. Just not using the Apple health/sleep native features.

In my case I have AutoSleep which I was using long before using apples version and I noticed that it does record my naps.

nareshkumarhk wrote:

But why i need to enable sleep mode manually - my nap times are usually drifty in nature and i cant really pre plan it.

There is no sleep detection without setting a schedule, otherwise it would record many periods of apparent inactivity as sleep. People my age would appear to be asleep half the day (possibly true but embarrassing)

You wrote" Except, of course, for the fact it doesn't answer the question. The native sleep function in the Watch doesn't recognize and record naps. " Yoyr response was not helpful/accuruate as the orginal post suggested to make sleep time 8-8 instead of 11pm-8am This way if i fall asleep on the couch from 9-11, it WILL record this as sleep. That sugestion worked. so it IS a WAY to get the watch to record that "nap"

andriusk79 wrote:

It is tracking sleep only at scheduled sleep time as example 00:00 to 07:00 outside of theses hours its not tracking anything.

Yes, that is the way it works.

Its should track automatically then you get asleep without scheduling.

If you want a device that works in a different way, you'll need a different device.

You can let Apple know your thoughts here:

Product Feedback - Apple

Jfkosu wrote:

You wrote" Except, of course, for the fact it doesn't answer the question. The native sleep function in the Watch doesn't recognize and record naps. " Yoyr response was not helpful/accuruate as the orginal post suggested to make sleep time 8-8 instead of 11pm-8am This way if i fall asleep on the couch from 9-11, it WILL record this as sleep. That sugestion worked. so it IS a WAY to get the watch to record that "nap"

It does not answer the original question, which was how to get the watch to record a nap. But, if the work around makes you happy, awesome!

nareshkumarhk wrote:

Its not the matter of if it was advt or listed in the product spec... its just a simple thing to do for a smart watch. Since most of us relay on these 'smart' features to track health it will be of a great help to extent the feature which it already has - ex - in the Sleep app one can find during the sleep time - how many hrs a person is awake/sleeping/rem/core. The change would be such trivial to extent the same feature set during non sleep hours.

The whole point about sleep tracking is to see which of the 3 sleep patterns you had and for how long, wrist temperature and resps also. Temperature for example requires a nice dark indoor environment to work. Napping gives none of this and is a pointless analysis. Other smart watch makers do offer pointless trivia like naps and steps just to attract the the ex Fitbit crowd.

Ask for pointless analysis if you want, you have the link.

There is no “sleep detection” as the Apple Recommended AI bot output explains, you need to schedule it or turn it on manually

Setting your sleep schedule at a certain time, i.e. 9:00PM-5:00AM does not mean that is the only time it will track sleep, it is just your standard bed time, and while not everyone goes to sleep at the same time every night, many people do have schedules they abide by.

If you do not have a schedule, open the health app on your phone and go to sleep, find the sleep schedule and toggle off both “sleep schedule” and “use schedule for sleep focus”. This way you can just turn on sleep focus mode when you do go to sleep or nap.

When you lay down to nap, open control panel on your phone and turn on the “sleep” focus mode.

If you can’t take 2 seconds to do this when you lay down to nap or sleep then that’s on you because it is seriously the most simple thing in the world and you shouldn’t be THAT lazy.

It’s not like you are napping or falling asleep out of nowhere unplanned, at that point I’d recommend seeing a physician.

Hey nowhereman473!

You took a three hour nap, and it didn’t count your saying. If everything when well and it still didn’t count, then it might be because of the duration you slept. Usually Apple would count your sleep as a sleep session in its four hours or longer.

Hope this helps,

thaman32

I think if you define a bigger sleep window it will record you as having been asleep but it won’t identify it as light, deep, rem, awake. It will do the same thing if you wake up and don’t get out of bed.

Jfkosu wrote:

This is the most helpful reply I have seen. Thanks for taking the time to give such a comprehensive response.

Except, of course, for the fact it doesn't answer the question. The native sleep function in the Watch doesn't recognize and record naps.

I did a lot of research before buying the Apple Watch. I read and read and I even spoke with Apple several times and asked a gazillion questions to make sure it did what I wanted.

They said "Yes" the apple watch records sleep and shows the data.

I believed them. I bought it.

I used it and there was NOT a sleep app in the watch.

After buying it, I found out the watch did not come with a factory sleep app.

One had to be purchased from the app store.

Utterly ridiculous. So, they lied.

They have since upgraded their software to include a sleep app.

But the watch still falls short in that it cannot detect naps.

Pretty basic stuff that other watches can do, for much less money one would expect the expensive Apple watch to be capable of even if one didn't put all the time I did into my pre purchase research.