About Sleep Staging in Sleep Cycle on iOS

About Sleep Stages in Sleep Cycle

Sleep Cycle estimates your time spent in different sleep stages: Awake, Light Sleep, Deep Sleep, and REM (Rapid Eye Movement). This feature gives you an overview of your sleep patterns to help you understand your sleep quality over time.

Sleep Stages are shown in your sleep graph after each night.

What is a normal amount of time in each sleep stage?

There is no universal "ideal" distribution of sleep stages — sleep patterns vary from person to person and from night to night. However, general guidelines suggest:

Keep in mind that these numbers are averages and your sleep needs may differ depending on age, lifestyle, and health.

Why does my sleep stage data look strange or inaccurate?

Sleep Cycle estimates your sleep stages based primarily on breathing patterns. If your sleep stage graph doesn’t look right, it might be due to:

• The device being too far from you during the night.
• Background noise interfering with sound detection (like fans, pets, or snoring).
• Sleeping positions that limit sound detection (like facing away from the device).
• Technical limitations — we are constantly improving our technology to better detect breathing patterns.

How can I get the most accurate sleep stage data?

For best results:

• Place your phone close to you (on a bedside table or near your pillow).
• Avoid covering your phone’s microphone.
• Minimize background noise in the room.
• Keep your device charged overnight.

Even with optimal setup, sleep stage detection is an estimate — not a medical measurement.

Why doesn’t Sleep Cycle show sleep stages every night?

In some cases, we may not be able to detect clear enough breathing patterns to show sleep stages. This can happen if:

• There was too much noise interference.
• The phone was too far away.
• Your breathing was very irregular or shallow.

We are continuously working to improve our sleep stage detection so that more users get accurate data more often.