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    Sleep Smarter with the Pillow App on iPhone

    Pillow tracks your sleep stages, heart rate, and snoring using your Apple Watch or iPhone microphone. Learn how to read your nightly sleep report.

    4 min read 5 stepsApril 20, 2026Verified April 2026
    1

    Download Pillow and Connect Apple Health

    ~24s
    Search "Pillow Sleep Tracker" in the App Store and install it. When you open the app for the first time, it will ask permission to read and write data to Apple Health. Tap "Allow All" — this is how Pillow stores your sleep data in Apple's Health app so it appears alongside your other health information. You can review and remove this data from the Health app at any time.
    2

    Choose Apple Watch Mode or iPhone-Only Mode

    ~30s
    If you own an Apple Watch, keep it on your wrist when you go to bed. Pillow will automatically detect the watch and use its heart rate sensor for more accurate sleep stage detection. If you are tracking without a watch, place your iPhone face-down on your nightstand before sleeping. The app will use the phone's microphone and accelerometer (a sensor that detects movement) to estimate your sleep stages.

    Quick Tip

    Quick Tip: Charge your Apple Watch to at least 30% before bed to make sure it lasts through the night.

    3

    Start a Sleep Session

    ~21s
    Open Pillow before bed and tap "Go to sleep." The app will begin monitoring in the background — you do not need to keep the screen on. If you are using Apple Watch, you can also start a session from the Watch app directly on your wrist. The tracking happens automatically until you wake up and stop the session in the morning.
    4

    Review Your Sleep Report in the Morning

    ~22s
    When you wake up, open Pillow and end the session by tapping "Wake up." Your sleep report will appear, showing a graph of your sleep stages throughout the night. You will see how long you spent in deep sleep, light sleep, and REM sleep, plus your heart rate if you used an Apple Watch. A quality score at the top gives you a quick summary.
    5

    Check Weekly Trends

    ~20s
    Tap the "History" tab to see your sleep data across multiple nights. After a week or two, you can start to see patterns — for example, whether you tend to get less deep sleep when you go to bed late, or whether your heart rate during sleep is higher on stressful days. These trends are more useful than any single night's data.

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    Pillow is a sleep tracking app for iPhone and Apple Watch. It records information about your sleep throughout the night — including which sleep stages you go through, your heart rate, and sounds you make while sleeping like snoring or coughing — and turns that data into a morning report you can review over coffee.

    There are two ways to use Pillow. If you own an Apple Watch, wearing it to bed gives you the most accurate data because it reads your heart rate directly from your wrist. If you do not have an Apple Watch, Pillow can still track your sleep using your iPhone's microphone and motion sensors, though heart rate data will not be available in that mode.

    Sleep stages are the different phases your body cycles through during the night. Deep sleep is when your body repairs itself and your brain consolidates memories. Light sleep is the transition between deep sleep and wakefulness. REM sleep (short for "Rapid Eye Movement") is associated with dreaming and is important for emotional well-being. Pillow shows you how much time you spent in each of these stages.

    Pillow syncs with the Apple Health app, so your sleep data is stored in one place alongside your steps, heart rate, and other health metrics. The free version of Pillow includes basic tracking. A premium plan (available as a one-time purchase or subscription) adds audio recordings, detailed analysis, and multi-night comparison charts.

    This app is for iPhone only. Android users should look at other sleep tracking apps such as Sleep Cycle or Google Fit's sleep tracking feature.

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    Official Resources

    Medicare.govMedlinePlus — Health InfoAARP Health & Technology

    Sources used to create and verify this guide. View all sources →

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    Sleep Smarter with the Pillow App on iPhone — Step-by-Step Guide | TekSure