They say the older we get, the less sleep we need. Whether you are 25 years old or 75 years old, sleep may feel like a paramount and pleasurable entity that’s often just out of your reach. The data proves this: one in three adults do not get an adequate amount of sleep, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Read below about the Best Sleep Apps.
The blessings of modern technology are as much gifts as they are a curse. While we can stay connected to the outside world more easily, for longer, and in the privacy of our own homes, it comes at a cost unbeknownst to most: the distortion of our body’s natural instincts. Our human clocks are meant to awaken at dawn and nod off into peacefulness at dusk, following the pattern of the sun. And yet the gadgets we live with, that bring us so much ease and efficiency, also confuse our inner timetables. Several studies have shown that the light emitted from both large and small electronic devices is more than enough to miscue the brain and prolong our wakefulness, making sleep slip further from our grasp. On children these influences are even stronger, according to the National Sleep Foundation.
Regardless of what is keeping you up, the fact that something is blocking you from submerging your mind into “off mode” is not only unsustainable, it’s unhealthy. It weakens memory, increases the physical aging process, lowers your sex drive and makes losing weight harder. If that wasn’t enough, it can also create serious risk of myriad heart problems, high blood pressure, and diabetes.
And yet…
If you’re reading this article, chances are you know better than anyone how much you need sleep — but something is blocking you from getting it. Let’s take a look at the top 15 sleep apps of 2018, each of which tackles specific ailments that can help you drift off and stay off a suitable number of hours.
1. Sleep Meister Lite
Price: Free
Available on: iOS
Sleep Meister Lite has all the top features when it comes to waking you from your rest, including alarms, snooze, volume, and
vibrations that will go off in when the user is in a light stage of REM sleep, helping you avoid usually grogginess. However, as we know, the most difficult part is not waking up, it’s catching those zzz’s the night before. Sleep Meister’s most unique trait is its ability to turn itself off when it senses that you have finally reached a state of slumber. You can manually add your favorite songs, podcasts, or recordings on the app, which will fade out, close down, and save your phone’s battery when the mission is accomplished.
This app also records a sleep cycle that can be share across various social media and can record any sleep talking or snoring that goes on during the night. It also offers an action memo to help you note what you have and have not done as part of your nightly routine (i.e., liquor consumption, exercise, meal, bathing, etc.) You can review this data by week, month, and year to figure out what combination is putting you to bed best.
Note: The premium version of Sleep Meister is the same product, but without advertisements.
2. Relax Melodies: Sleep Sounds
Price: Free; Offers in-app monthly and yearly subscriptions
Available on: iOS and Android
Relax Melodies is a clear winner among the bunch when it comes to user numbers, at is has been downloaded more than 35 million times. Featured in a host of magazines for its effectiveness in helping users find sleep, this app has dozens of varying sounds to carry you off to dreamland.
Not only can you mix different sounds together to create your own sleep soundtrack, you also have access to ‘Community Melodies’ which offers the all-time best mixes from the Relaxed Melodies community of users. It also functions perfectly in the background of other apps, allowing you to multitask while enjoying its peaceful sounds.
Pro Tip: Relaxed Melodies also has multi-day and single meditation sessions on topics including better sleep, understanding your dreams, life coaching, and more.
3. Pillow
Price: Free; Unlocked version is $4.99
Available on: iOS
Sometimes hitting the pillow can mean hours of tossing and turning before sleep finally claims you, and often can find no suitable explanation for this all-too common phenomenon. The Pillow app’s plethora of recorded information the next morning will help you discombobulate whatever disaster you slept (or didn’t sleep) through the night before.
While this is an app to be used with Apple products, it’s most effective when paired with an Apple Watch. Wearing your watch to bed will allow Pillow to provide you with not only a breakdown of your awakened hours, your REM hours, your light sleep and your deep sleep, it can also tell you your resting heart rate during each phase. It also records movements as well as sounds and breathing patterns, which can help you discern if snoring or sleep talking are disturbing your (or your partner’s) ability to rest.
Using advanced algorithms that boast high level of accuracy thanks to the multitude of information it gathers, Pillow uses your own sleeping history to determine when is the best time within your alarm window to wake you up. Lastly, it also offers suggestions of personalized experiences and sleep tips and recommendations. It also pings your phone to remind you that you are underslept and suggest what to do to get a good night’s rest the next time you head hits the pillow.
Note: Unlocking Pillow will allow you to export your sleep recording and statistics, and also offers tools for power napping.
4. Apple Bedtime
Price: Free
Available on: iOS
If you have more trouble actually getting yourself into bed, compared to falling asleep, Apple Bedtime is a great option. It comes with both a bedtime alarm as well as a wakeup alarm, and also offers a bedtime reminder 15, 30, 45, or 60 minutes before you should hit the sack. This allows a lot of its users to recognise the hour – amidst the many distractions of the evening – and start their bedtime process with a shot at getting the lights on time.
Have you ever looked forward to Saturday morning with a yearning to sleep-in until your heart’s desire, only to have your work alarm sound at dawn because you forgot to turn it off? Apple Bedtime can also help you avoid this serious mister by allowing you to plan out each alarm individually for every day of the week.
It tracks your sleeping hours but also shows you exactly how many hours you’ll be asleep based on when you go to sleep and wake up. Lastly, it gives options for an exact wake up time, while other apps have the alarm go within a 30-minute window off based on your REM cycles. This is better for sleepers that like to run a tight ship and prefer the same wake up schedule each day.
Lastly, users can customize not only the sounds but the volume of their alarms in the mornings. Because who likes to wake up to loud noise, especially noise that is several decibels to loud?
Note: Apple Bedtime not technically an app, but a built-in free feature of the iPhone found under the Clock app.
5. Twilight
Price: Free; Ad-free pro version is $2.99
Available on: Android
On the back of a few Apple recommended products, it’s important to also rep for those that are only available on Android devices, of which there are many amazing products.
Like we mentioned earlier, the backlit displays of our smartphones and tablets radiate a particular light (often blue in hue) that disrupts our bodies’ natural circadian rhythm, which is what has us craving sleep at night and activity during the day. Several sleep doctors recommend doing all you can to synchronize your body’s master clock to external cues that are found in your environment, like, light exposure.
Enter your new favorite cell phone app, Twilight. Made just for Android supported phones, this app automatically adjusts the hues of your phone’s display depending on the hour, slowly lowering the levels of blue – which keep us wired – and switching in a red filter as night approaches. This offers a softer display and an easier transition to lights out. This can also be a good choice for people who are not ready to give up reading or browsing before bed on their electronic devices, but want to help their body ease into rest.
Pro Tip: Twilight’s display colors drain the battery slower than under normal conditions, keeping you powered up for longer.
6. Sleep As Android
Price: Free; In-app features available at an additional cost
Available on: Android
Sleep as Android was one of the first sleep apps around, and thus is has developed into one of the best all-around trackers and aids for a good night’s rest. It’s got all the bedtime ritual support that Apple Bedtime has and more, and also offers the same feature of setting different alarms for different days. It gently reminds those who want to turn their phone onto airplane mode to do so, in order to avoid any possibility of disturbance during slumber.
When it wakes you, it’ll give you the option to snooze, but turning off the alarm will also require that you solve a CAPTCHA code – a short online typing test – in order to ensure that both your brain and body are functioning enough to get on with your day.
Note: Sleep As Android is compatible with Android Wear, Pebble (RIP), and Galaxy Gear devices. It can also be integrated with Google Fit and Samsung Health.
7. Headspace
Price: $12.99/monthly, $95.88/annual, $399/lifetime membership
Available on: iOS and Android
Not only is meditation during the day a useful trick to help you sleep better at night, it can also increase your overall experience of being awake.
In order to fall asleep we need a crucial neuro chemical hormone called “melatonin,” the levels of which elevate in the brain just before we head to bed, bringing on that blessed tired feeling many of us lack. A big reason why you may not be feeling sleepy is a lack of this hormone, whose biggest enemy and inhibitor of growth is stress.
There are a number of scientific studies proving the connection between lower stress levels, better sleeping, and a continual meditation practice. The Headspace app is perfect for those whose minds run away with them as soon as they hit the lights. The app provides lots lot of supportive material for sleeping, including 30 different meditation sessions focused just on sleep, which run for 10, 15, or 20 minutes. Mediations are partly guided, to allow you to feel connected, but also offering the silence that may lull you to sleep.
There are also several series of meditations for emotions on all kinds, including the very ones that may be keeping you up at night. Options include: self-esteem, sadness, regret, anger, acceptance, etc. All of these come in packs of as little as 10 session and as many as 30.
There are also single meditation sessions, ranging from 3 to 20 minutes long (you can choose the length for each one). These include a specific meditation for bedtime, falling back asleep, for waking up, and for the early morning. If one particular certain situation has you up at night, there are meditations for difficult conversations, interviews, feeling overwhelmed, losing your temper, and more.
Pro Tip: Headspace also includes half a dozen sleep sounds to power down with along with meditations for transitioning from work to home and then to bed.
8. Sleeptracker® 24/7
Price: $0.99
Available on: iOS
Sleeptracker® 24/7 has been one of the top paid medical apps on the market for a few years. It not only functions as a sleep app, it also works as an all-in-one activity tracker. It monitors all your body’s functioning 24 hours a day 7 days a week, hence its name.
Picture Sleeptracker® 24/7 like a sleep app bred with a Fitbit. It sends you notifications of step counts, active time, calorie intake, as well as sleep count, to help you achieve both your active and rest goals within a 24-hour cycle. In addition to a snore and sleep apnea recorder, a resting heart rate monitor, and a section for tracking weight loss, the app also boasts sleep analysis that is within 90% accuracy of professional sleep monitors used in professional sleep clinics. Plus, it uses Sleeptracker® patented technology and an intelligent alarm clock to wake you at the most optimal time for your body, when you’re in a phase of light sleep.
Note: Sleeptracker® 24/7 is based on seven years of R&D on the biomechanics of natural human motion.
9. Audible
Price: $14.95/month (after a 30-day free trial), which includes one credit good for any audiobook, no matter the price. Additional books purchased within the month are 30% off.
Available on: iOS and Android
You are probably already familiar with Audible, Amazon’s vast collection of audiobooks that allows us to multitask while listening to our favorite stories. Did you know that the Audible app also offers a sleep timer feature? This handy option, found at the bottom of the screen of whatever book your enjoying, offers six different lengths of time to continue playing your book as you slowly fall into a deep slumber. With all little as 8 minutes, and as long as one hour, it can be a great way to temper your book bingeing, lest you stay up until the wee hours of the night, your face glued to the pages.
Pro Tip: Audible even offers a sleep timer option for “End of Chapter” which can be a great way to savour a story, and also may come in handy as a parent if kids ask for just a bit more reading before bed.
10. Pzizz
Price: Free; Variations of its ad-free premium versions range from $4.99-$19.99
Available on: iOS and Android
This sleep app is as unique as its name, and has garnered quite a bit of attention from the celebrity world. With testimonials from the likes of J.K. Rowling, His Royal Highness, The Duke of York, and NBA Star Roy Hibbert, it’s no surprise that Pzizz has more than 500,000 users falling asleep to its unique cocktail of dreamy sounds and sleep-inducing techniques.
Pzizz offer three different modes: sleep, nap and focus. The sleep mode is unique in its use of scientifically backed sleep-provoking psychoacoustic sounds, which marry a mix of music, sound effects, and optional voice overs which vary every single night.
If it’s a midday siesta you are looking for, Pzizz is also the top of its class for offering intense power naps that allow you to sleep for an amount of time that leaves you energized, not lethargic.
Lastly, focus mode helps you in the productivity department, by increasing the ‘focuscape’ environments of sound that assist you in getting in the zone, created with the same research put into find the perfect harmonies for inducing sleep.
Pro Tip: Pzizz can work in tandem with other apps, functioning seamlessly with a book on Audible or a lecture on YouTube, or even some relaxing melodies on Spotify!
11. Sleep Better
Price: Free
Available on: iOS and Android
At this point in the list, it’s easy to see that most of the best apps offer 85-90% of the same features as their competitors. However, it’s that 10% that may get you to download one or the other, based on your personal preference.
Sleep Better has all your standard premium features of a sleep tracker. However, what it offers that nearly no other apps do, is a supplemental caffeine log, dream diary and moon-phase tracker. If you are someone that likes to consider and record the outside elements that are ridding you from a good night’s rest, try Sleep Better. The benefits of this data could help in bringing self-awareness into what elements make you feel as light as a feather when you put your head to rest.
Note: Sleep Better is fully integrated with Apple Health, allowing you to upload all your data
12. Lullabytes
Price: Free
Available on: iOS
While the well-worn expression “sleep like a baby” is used to describe an undisturbed night of sleep, we all know babies don’t always have a great time getting to sleep, or staying asleep. Thus, this app is targeted towards little ones (and even big ones) who have a knack for lullabies and soothing music to lull them off to a dreamful state.
The app contains a dozen classic lullabies which flow one between the other, slowly tapering in energy levels, and ending with a soft version of Brahms’ Lullaby. The music is beautiful for all ages. In fact, the 25-minute concert was arranged and performed by the four-time RIAA-certified Gold Album award-winning team that created the Baby Einstein music library.
Best of all, users have access to data on their duration of sleep throughout a 24-hour period, including naps. Another neat feature is the app’s ‘soundscape mode,’ which will start playing again as soon as it detects your baby’s cries, possibly saving you a trip to the nursery.
Note: Lullabytes is suggested for children 0 to 36 months.
13. Sleep Cycle
Price: Free; The premium version is $29.99, a free trial of which is offered.
Available on: iOS and Android
Sleep Cycle app is one of those all-around winners that has been available for a while and continues to keep up with ever-changing technology improvements. It has all the favorite features of a modern sleep tracker, plus a few bonus options that come along with the premium option.
In addition to timed sleep tracking, noise recording, and a breakdown of your sleep quality, additional perks include: waking up with a weather forecast for the day, comparing your long-term sleep trends with world sleep statistics, and even simulating a natural sunrise in your bedroom with the purchase of a Philips HUE light bulb.
Note: Sleep Cycle Power Nap is also offered as a separate app, and is free.
14. Apple Podcasts
Price: Free
Available on: iOS
While the vast majority of Apple Podcasts have been recorded in the hopes of being listened to and retained, they also serve as a fantastic way to lull yourself to sleep. This is particularly true for those of you who may have fallen asleep from a young age to the sound of the television or the radio.
There are thousands of shows to choose from, and depending on your mental state, you can browse one that is right for you. If your mind becomes a scary place when you try to sleep, try something in the comedy section or fantasy section to lighten things up. Of course there are myriad history podcasts that can put you quickly to sleep, unless you’re trying to make up for naps your took during history period back in school: in that case you could try the series “While you Were Sleeping.”
There are also dozens podcasts directly geared towards falling asleep, whether it be the science behind it or the soothing voice of a guided journey to a pasture full of sheep, Apple’s Podcasts offer the right commentary for even the most difficult sleepers.
Pro Tip: Have you been wanting to learn something new and challenging, but haven’t had the time? Try popping on a podcast on global politics, chemistry, or mechanical engineering until the lights go out upstairs. While you’re sleeping you may retain more than you think!
15. Sleep Genius
Price: $4.99
Available on: iOS and Android
The research behind the creation of this last sleep app is what sets it apart from all the others. Sleep Genius was invented using the research that helped NASA Astronauts go to sleep. So, if it can put people asleep while floating in space, chances are it will get you to sleep on Earth.
The app focuses on the importance of getting into bed before your designated bedtime, in order to give yourself maximum opportunity to experience the crucial 5 cycles of sleep that most people need to get a fully-rested night.
The Sleep Genius Relaxation Program is also offered to reduce stress and anxiety using methods based on scientific research, including calming sounds and peaceful music. It is also recommended that the Relaxation Program be utilized during stressful times of the day, in addition to before bed during the night.
Note: Sleep Genius also offers a Power Nap feature that allows you to get the most out of a small window of rest time during the day.
One more: YouTube Premium
Price: $9.99/month
Available on: iOS and Android
We all know that YouTube is fabulous for learning, for vegging out, and staying up all night laughing, among a host of other things. It’s a true resource of this decade and its users and contributors are still growing. You may not have ever considered its use for helping you to unplug, however, given some of the common annoyances of its operation (incessant ads as a small example). However, YouTube Premium, a monthly subscription used with the original YouTube app strips your entire watching or listening experience from all advertisements.
This may seem like enough of a relief in and of itself, but YouTube Premium subscription offers additional features that make it an ideal partner to fall asleep with. Not only can you watch or listen to videos instantly, without interruptions, you can also close the YouTube app and continue listening to whatever you have on, a feature not available on the standard version. This means no more falling asleep to a YouTube white noise video with your laptop cracked open, light pouring out, or your phone’s display brightening the room.
Lastly, YouTube Premium works both offline and in background, meaning you can download videos to keep you blissfully unconscious while you’re flying or somewhere without wifi, and you can add any other sort of music playing app simultaneously. What about combining a meditation on YouTube with your favourite ambiance music? Or maybe you prefer falling off to sleep with your favorite historical fiction narrative on YouTube with some wind chimes from your another sleep noise app. Youtube Premium offers you all of these choices and more.
What to do next…
- Learn about the Somn Sleep Assessment
- How journaling can help you sleep