How to use sleep tracking on your Samsung Galaxy Watch

Are you interested in using sleep tracking on your Samsung Galaxy Watch? It’s a neat feature to analyze the overall quality of your sleep, sleep duration, and other sleeping habits. 

And while that doesn’t sound like much, do not forget that sleeping is one of the essential functions of the human body.

Bad sleeping habits are enough to ruin an otherwise very healthy person. So, without further ado, let us get right into the guide!

Related reading

• Samsung Galaxy Watch snore detection not working? Fix it now
• 4 best blood pressure monitors that work with the Samsung Health app
• How to use Goodnight Mode on your Samsung Galaxy Watch
• Not getting a good night’s sleep? Try these sleep gadgets and tech 

How Samsung watches track your sleep

Before outlining how you can set up your Samsung Galaxy watch to track sleep, let’s look into how it does that.

First, your watch uses its built-in accelerometer (motion sensor) and Samsung Health’s proprietary algorithms to detect when your body is resting and no longer moving around.

Samsung Health also uses your watch’s other sensors to get more detailed sleep data, such as the heart rate and SpO2 sensors. And if you want to detect snoring, it also uses your paired phone’s microphone.

Unique to the Galaxy Watch 4 and above is Samsung’s BioActive Sensor, which combines the three most powerful health sensors (Optical Heart Rate, Electrical Heart Signal, and Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis) into a single chip!

This single BioActive Sensor measures your heart rate, blood oxygen level, and stress level. It can also monitor your blood pressure, detect an irregular heartbeat, and calculate your body composition. 

If your watch isn’t tracking your sleep at all, make a backup of your watch and then reset your watch. After resetting, connect to your recent backup and run through the steps below to ensure sleep tracking is set up correctly.

Set up for sleep tracking using the Samsung Health app

If you haven’t done this already, we must ensure sleep tracking is correctly configured. 

First, you need to pair the Samsung Galaxy Watch with a smartphone. While you can use sleep tracking independently, a smartphone keeps the results over days, weeks, or even months of sleep tracking.

And that’s a good way of motivating yourself to do better. 

To pair your Galaxy Watch with a smartphone: 

1. Install the Galaxy Wearable app on your phone (Android/iOS)
2. Enable Bluetooth
3. Open the Galaxy Wearable app with your Samsung Galaxy Watch nearby.
4. Pick your Galaxy Watch
5. And complete the pairing process by following the on-screen instructions.

Install the Samsung Health app

Once pairing is complete, download and install the Samsung Health app if it’s not already on your phone and watch

• You’ll use this app to monitor your sleep patterns using your Galaxy Watch.
• Once installed, don’t forget to set it up using your Samsung account (or create a new one.)

Turn on automatic heart rate monitoring

1. Open the Samsung Health app.
2. Scroll down and tap Heart rate.
3. Scroll or swipe down to the bottom of the screen past the current heart rate and the HR range for the day.
4. Tap Settings (may also be called HR and stress measurement or Auto HR settings.)
5. Turn on Measures continuously or Always to allow your watch to track your sleep stages (REM.)
6. To set high and low heart rate notifications, scroll further down and toggle these settings on.
   1. To change the default high or low heart rate bpm, tap the number, choose your preferred bpm, and tap Done.
   2. Alerts only work when resting, not during exercise, and only show up when you hit the high or low threshold when you are at rest for at least 10 minutes–they are not heart rate zone alerts for workouts.

Turn on Samsung Health’s REM sleep recording

Depending on what Watch model and version of the app you use, you may need to set up this additional setting.

• Open Samsung Health’s Sleep category.
• Swipe and tap the Settings button.
  • You may need to tap the three-dot More button on the right and tap the Settings.
• Toggle on Record REM sleep if you see this option.

Turn on blood oxygen level monitoring during sleep

Set-up snore detection

Wear the smartwatch snugly about two fingers above your wrist bone, put it into Bedtime mode (if not automatically scheduled), and get a good night’s sleep in the morning:

1. Head to the home screen of your Galaxy Watch and select Samsung Health
2. Tap on the sleep icon
3. Scroll down and check your sleep stats, including your sleep score, actual sleep time, and weekly average sleep time. Keep scrolling to see all the information.

You should see your sleep stats in detail if it works as intended. Your Samsung Galaxy watch tracks four stages in your sleep: awake, REM, light sleep, and deep sleep.

No REM sleep tracking?

If you don’t see any REM information and haven’t updated the latest operating system, REM tracking may turn off.

When REM is off, your watch only measures your sleep stages through your movements.

Turn on Record REM sleep by going through the sleep tracking screen’s settings menu

• On the sleep screen, swipe up or down and tap the Settings button.
• Turn on Record REM sleep.

Review your sleep metrics and stats on your paired phone instead of your watch

You can always look at your sleep stats, score, and other metrics on your phone too!

1. On your phone, open the Samsung Health app.
2. Scroll down and tap Sleep.
3. Review your sleep details by scrolling through them.
   1. Tap on the Sleep Score to see even more details, including how you compare to your same age and gender group and information on best practices.
4. To view your sleep history, tap the Trends tab at the top. There are options to view this by day, week, or month.

Is the Samsung Health app not showing your sleep metrics?

If your Samsung Galaxy watch shows your sleep data but isn’t syncing that sleep information to the Health app, look at some settings on your phone and watch.

1. Turn Battery Saver and power savings mode off on your phone.
2. Disable airplane mode.
3. Turn off any power savings mode on your watch.

If you check all those things, try these troubleshooting tips:

• Wear the watch on the inside of your wrist or arm. This is especially useful if you have tattoos or have a lot of arm hair (you could also shave your hair, but wearing it on the inside is a lot easier!)
• Check for an update for the Watch, Wearable app, and Samsung Health app.
  • Make sure you update the apps on your phone and your watch.
  • To update apps on Wear OS watches, open the Play Store, scroll down to Manage apps, and tap Update all or tap each app to update.
  • To update apps on older Tizen watches, open the Wearable app and choose the Galaxy Store tab. Tap the Menu button at the top (three horizontal lines icon) and choose My Apps. Finally, tap Update to see watch apps with updates.
• Restart both devices (watch and phone.)
• Try forcing a manual sync
  • Open the Samsung Health app on your phone.
  • Select the Menu button and choose Settings.
  • Tap Sync with Samsung account, then choose Sync now.
• Uninstall and re-install the Samsung Health app.

See this article for more tips: Sleep tracking not working on Samsung Galaxy Watch? Lets fix it.

Interpreting Sleep Tracking

Sleep tracking means you must wear the watch on your wrist while sleeping.

That’s because smartwatches rely mainly, if not entirely, on movement to analyze your sleep habits. 

After a decent night’s sleep, you should get the below results: 

• Time in bed: The overall time you spent lying down – regardless of how much of it was while sleeping.
• Sleep score: The final score that resembles the overall sleep quality for that night by measuring all of your stats.
• Actual sleep time: This Shows only how much time you spent sleeping – regardless of how much time you spent in bed.
• Awake: How much time you spend awake while lying on the bed.
• REM: The overall time you spent in the REM stage “Rapid Eye Movement.”
• Light: How much of your sleep was light sleep.
• Deep: How much time do you spend in the deep sleep stage.
• Typical range: The minimum and maximum averages for a healthy adult of your age, gender, and body weight. Typical ranges are identified by the white diagonal lines in the graph.
• Weekly average: How much time you spend sleeping on average every week.

And you can also check your results further beyond the weekly restriction of the watch by using your phone – which is one of the main reasons we showed you how to pair the watch in the first steps. 

What about the sleep score?

It’s worth keeping in mind that the sleep score doesn’t simply reflect how much you sleep. The overall quality of your sleep is just as important as the length. 

For example, 8 hours of sleep with very little deep sleep and REM sleep may be lower than 7 hours with sufficient deep sleep and REM sleep scores. 

Use Samsung’s sleep coach

Another offering unique to Wear OS 3 watches like the Galaxy Watch 4 and above is Samsung Health’s sleep coaching program, which Samsung designed to help you learn how to sleep better (requires Samsung Health app version 6.22 or later.)

Their Advanced Sleep Coaching analyzes your sleep patterns and then creates a personalized 5-week program to help you gain better sleep habits.

This sleep coaching program analyzes your sleep pattern over one week. You must complete the full 7-days, including five weekdays and two weekend days, to access your sleep coach. 

After that week, you complete two sleep surveys, and the coach assigns you a sleep animal that matches your sleep type.

These animals include Sun Averse Mole, Nervous Penguin, Unconcerned Lion, Sensitive Hedgehog, Cautious Deer, Exhausted Shark, Easygoing Walrus, and Alligator On The Hunt.

Once you know your sleep animal, you can take advantage of Samsung’s sleep coaching program that lasts for four to five weeks and helps improve your sleep quality and improve your sleep habits. 

The coaching includes checklists, meditation guidance, personalized reports, sleep-related articles, and even missions to improve sleep quality.

Understanding Sleep Tracking: How Does the Galaxy Watch Track Sleep? 

Smartwatches can tell how well you are sleeping by using various tools. Some of the most popular ones are: 

• Movement and positioning: This is pretty self-explanatory. Vast movements indicate that you are awake while standing still after a certain amount of time, which means that you are going through light sleep
• Sound: Things like snoring and outside noises may decrease your sleep quality. Sleep trackers may use such info to calculate your final sleep score
• Heart rate: Our heart rate changes when we sleep and can change depending on sleep quality. A sudden spike in heart rate, for example, may indicate that you just entered the REM stage or that maybe you are having a nightmare
• AI: The AI of the program can finally process all of the data that it gathers from your sleeping habits and determine how well you sleep in detail

Not to mention that the watch can also use information such as your daily sleeping time and waking up to determine further whether you are sleeping well or not. 

It’s worth noting that all the above methods of sleep tracking are general and not exclusive to Galaxy Watches. 

Disclaimer

At this point, it’s worth pointing out that sleep tracking isn’t always entirely accurate. You should never replace health experts with a smartwatch for heart well-being, sleeping habits, blood pressure, or anything health-related. 

Smartwatches and other smart devices are always cool and helpful to have. But we are nowhere near the point where we can use them to replace expensive medical equipment and health experts. 

Is sleep tracking not working? How to fix Galaxy Watch sleep tracking issues

Sleep tracking should work automatically out of the box. You only need to manually pair your smartphone with the watch, enable REM tracking if needed (optional), and always wear the watch while sleeping. 

If sleep tracking doesn’t work, here are some of the most common solutions to try out: 

1. Enable Heart-Rate tracking: After 2018’s update, Galaxy Smartwatches can use sleep tracking without heart-rate monitoring. But there is still a chance that yours is bugged. So, try enabling heart-rate tracking first and see if that works.
2. Add a manual sleep report: The wearable app allows you to manually add some sleep data, such as when you went to sleep and woke up. Try adding one accurate report and see if the watch starts tracking after that.
3. Try rebooting the watch: The exact process of rebooting a Galaxy Watch may differ depending on the model. For most models like the Galaxy Watch 3 and above, hold down both buttons until the “Rebooting” screen comes up. Hopefully, that will fix your problem.
4. Unpair and re-pair the watch with your watch: This is unlikely to work, but it only takes a couple of minutes. So, go to the Wearable app and give it a try.
5. Perform a factory reset: This more drastic approach will delete everything on your watch. Again, the exact process may differ from watch to watch. To factory reset most models like the Galaxy Watch 3 and above, go to the general settings and hit the “Reset” option at the bottom of the list.
6. Please wait for it to fix itself: As weird as it sounds, there have been a few reports of people who faced this issue, and it got fixed on its own. So, if you can’t get it to work, maybe give it a couple of days before asking for a return.

Also, check out this troubleshooting article Sleep tracking not working on Samsung Galaxy Watch? Let’s fix it.

If you find another solution, let us and everyone else know about it in the comments section below! 

FAQ

What is Goodnight Mode or Bedtime Mode on Galaxy Watch? 

First, Bedtime mode and Goodnight mode are the same: newer models call it Bedtime, while older models call it Bedtime mode.  

As the name suggests, Goodnight Mode and Bedtime Mode are the Do Not Disturb (silent mode) features that you commonly find in smartphones – but for your Galaxy Watch and when you’re sleeping. 

It disables notifications – an obvious necessity when trying to sleep – but does not turn off alarms. So you can sleep through the night without any notifications interrupting you, but any alarms you set to wake up or anything else still go off in the morning or the alarm’s set time.

To manually use Bedtime mode or Goodnight mode

How to add sleep manually

If you forget to track a night of sleep, you can manually record using the Samsung Health app on your phone.

Open the Sleep tile in Samsung Health and scroll down to Record Manually (or Add sleep record.) Enter the time you went to sleep and the time you woke up and save it.

Can you sleep with a Galaxy Watch? 

Contrary to widespread rumors, there is no scientific evidence to claim that wireless devices are bad for our health.

So, as long as the feeling of having a watch on your wrist doesn’t prevent you from sleeping, there is nothing wrong with sleeping with a Galaxy Watch. 

You must wear the watch while sleeping to take advantage of sleep tracking. 

Why is the Galaxy Watch Sleep Tracking Accuracy so bad? 

The Samsung Galaxy Watch looks for times when you are at rest and relies a lot on your movement to determine when and how you are sleeping. 

The thing is that just because you are standing still doesn’t mean that you are sleeping. Many still lie in bed to watch TV, Netflix, or listen to music/podcasts. 

If the watch doesn’t have available methods to track biometrics, such as heart rate accurately, it may think you are taking a nap. Not to mention people who move a lot in their sleep and AI accuracy. So, your mileage in terms of accuracy may vary. 

Wrapping Up

That’s all there is to know about setting up and using sleep tracking on Samsung Galaxy Watch devices.

If you have more questions or anything to add, please let us and everyone else know about them in the comments section below!