Apple may have accidentally revealed that it's finally adding one of people's most-requested features to the Apple Watch
- Apple's Alarms app references an unreleased Sleep App, The Verge reported.
- The company markets Apple Watch as a health and fitness tracker, but it has never been able to natively track how you sleep.
- Releasing a native sleep-tracking app would make Apple Watches competitive with other wearables on the market.
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Since the Apple Watch was first released in 2015, Apple has promoted it as a health and fitness tracker, but it has never come with built-in sleep-tracking abilities.
It looks like that's about to change.
On Monday, The Verge's Jay Peters reported that a listing in the App Store for an Apple Watch Alarms app seems to refer to an unreleased Sleep app designed by Apple. A sample screenshot of the Alarms app shows an alarm set for 7 A.M and text reading "Set your bedtime and wake up in the Sleep app."
That language seems to indicate that Apple will release a Sleep app, one that lets you set a wake-up time similar to the iPhone's Clock app. A Sleep app would likely track sleep patterns and wake you up at the best time in your sleep cycle before your alarm, like other apps do, The Verge reported.
Since first introducing the watch, Apple has added other tracking features. The Apple Watch Series 5, released in September, comes with improved health-tracking technology, including the ability to track your heart rate and alert you to irregularities. The Series 5 also comes with a native Cycle Tracking App to follow your menstrual cycle.
With these additions, a sleep tracker would make sense as another way of expanding Apple's health offerings. The company has indicated possible plans to get into sleep tracking before. In 2017, Apple acquired Finnish sleep-tracking hardware company Beddit. In February 2019, Bloomberg reported that Apple was testing sleep-monitoring technology for future Apple Watches, with plans to announce the new capabilities by 2020.
At some point since The Verge noticed the potential Sleep app, Apple removed any reference to the app. It has not made any official announcement regarding a Sleep app. A spokesperson for Apple was not immediately available for comment.