Top 12 apps to help you sleep better
Do you struggle to go to sleep? Wake often during the night? Or wake up long before your alarm rings in the morning? Do you feel fatigued? Sleepy? Grumpy? Do you struggle to remember things? Do you struggle to focus and concentrate?
You might be one of the 30-35% of adults who suffer from occasional insomnia. According to a recent study, 30-35% of adults experience brief symptoms of insomnia, while 15-20% have short-term insomnia disorder, which lasts less than three months. 10% of adults have chronic insomnia disorder, which lasts at least three months at intervals of three times per week.
Severe insomnia can be treated by a process called cognitive behavioral therapy. This involves changing beliefs, attitudes and behaviors that negatively impacts your sleep. If you suffer from severe symptoms of insomnia, please seek the advice of a health-care professional.
However, here are some apps that might just help you fall asleep. In this list of 12 sleep apps, you’ll find everything ranging from meditation guidance to smart alarms.
Let’s dive right in!
- Sleep Genius
Available for: iOS + Android
Free or paid? Paid (but it’s worth it!)
Features:
Sleep Genius claims to be the most trusted sleep app on the web, and certainly seems to live up to the title.
It was developed after many years of research by a team of experts, specializing in neuroscience, sleep and sounds.
The neurosensory algorithms used by the Sleep Genius app not only helps you fall asleep faster, it also helps you sleep deeper and longer. You brain is guided through each sleep cycle, and woken at the perfect gap between cycles.
Unlike many apps designed to help you form sleeping habits, Sleep Genius does not only monitor your sleep, it actively helps you form healthy habits and can help cure sleep deprivation.
One of Sleep Genius’s great features is the Revive Cycle Alarm. Scientifically designed to prevent stress caused by a noisy alarm, the Revive Cycle gradually wakens you with soothing, gentle sounds. It is geared towards teaching your brain to awake in a more natural way. For the best effects, the app advises you to wake at the same time every day.
The Relaxation Program feature targets the cardiac and respiratory systems, and synchronizes brain activity. As with Sleep Genius’s other features, it is carefully and scientifically created to reduce stress and anxiety. Modified acoustic music triggers the relaxation response in both your mind and body. This feature can be used either to relax before going to bed, or just to take a break during a busy day.
Power Nap helps you recharge your brain and energy with a quick power nap. Light sleep is naturally induced by psychoacoustic music, scientifically modified to trigger relaxation. A gradual alarm ensures that you can relax without worrying about oversleeping.
- Sleep Cycle
Available for: iOS + Android
Free or paid? Free to download, but offers some in-app purchases.
Features:
Sleep Cycle is the world’s most used intelligent alarm clock. Its ratings on both the App Store and Google Play are impressive, and it has been featured in a variety of news sources, such as BBC, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.
According to research, a full sleep cycle lasts round about 90 minutes. In this 90 minute window you go through a state of light sleeping, followed by deep sleep and a dream state. The dream state is usually referred to as REM sleep, and when you’re rudely awakened by your alarm clock during this period you usually end up feeling groggy and struggle to start your day on a high note. Thanks to Sleep Cycle app’s nifty smart alarm, which picks up on your movement using the accelerometer in your smartphone, you can wake up during the light cycle of your sleep and start your day feeling fresh.
Sleep Cycle also includes detailed statistics, sleep notes and long-term graphs. This way you can see how your daytime habits affect the amount and quality of sleep you get.
Instead of using Sleep Cycle’s curated, high quality alarm melodies you can also integrate your own music into the app.
- Pzizz
Available for: iOS + Android
Free or paid? Completely free!
Features:
Pzizz gives you sleep at the push of a button, and it has been endorsed by many celebrities and featured in media outlets such as The New York Times, WIRED, Lifehacker, Sports Illustrated and Newsweek.
What makes Pzizz unusual, is that it uses the science of psychoacoustics to give you an optimized mix of sound effects, music and voiceovers to help you fall asleep. Pzizz also helps you stay asleep, and wakes you up at the perfect time with a built-in alarm.
Pzizz features both a Sleep Mode and a Nap Mode, and unlike many other apps doesn’t just throw the same sounds at you over and over again. The app prevents brain fatigue by slightly adjusting each session to give you some variety.
Pzizz is also highly customizable. You can easily keep control of your sleep by adjusting duration, volume and switching voice-over on and off.
- Sleep as Android
Available for: Android
Free or paid? Free to download, but offers some in-app purchases.
Features:
Sleep as Android offers a wide variety of interesting features. Crowned as the best insomnia app for 2017, its smart wake up alarm is thought to be the best on the market. While common alarm clocks ignore your body’s natural sleep cycle, this alarm carefully monitors your sleep to ensure that you wake at the right moment. Waking during light sleep is much more natural and stress free, and leaves you feeling refreshed instead of groggy.
Sleep as Android’s stats section offers everything from sleep debt stats, to sleep talk and snoring recording, to room noise stats. It even has some anti-snoring options, to help out your roommate.
To get you out of bed, this app uses CAPTCHA. The snooze button is much less attractive when you have to solve a math problem in order to get to it.
Sleep as Android also offers integration with several smart watches, heart monitors and major health services, like S Health, Beeminder, Google Fit, Zenobase and Fluxtream.
- Sleep Time
Available for: iOS + Android
Free or paid? Free to download, but offers some in-app purchases.
Features:
Sleep Time uses the accelerometer on your device to detect and analyze your movements during the night. Its nifty algorithm detects which phase of sleep you’re currently in, and then sets off the alarm at the perfect moment.
Sleep Time offers 20 built in alarms, ranging from a variety of cool sounds, and it will ring even when in silent mode. The interface is also clear and super easy to navigate.
In the insights part of the app, Sleep Time offers an in-depth sleep cycle analysis. With easy to read charts you can see how your habits effect the amount and quality of sleep you get. You can find patterns and maximize the efficiency of your sleep even when life gets hectic.
Falling asleep is not a problem with Sleep Time’s beautiful soundscapes. Simulating a natural environment, such as gentle waves, a rain forest storm, or a windy day, the app helps you drift off to sleep.
- Sleep Bot
Available for: iOS + Android
Free or paid? Free!
Features:
Ever wonder what’s happening while you sleep? So did the developers of this app.
Sleep Bot is designed to track and analyze your sleeping habits. With the use of sound and motion detectors, the app is able to record graphs and show correlations between movement and sound. It also records the noises you make during the night, so if you’ve ever had the urge to find out what you say in your sleep, this app has your back.
Sleep Bot offers an easy interface with one click punch-in using a widget. You can also set up an automatic alarm and a reminder to go to bed on time.
In the tip section, Sleep Bot not just offers some advice on falling asleep, it also offers some tricks to stay awake when you really need to.
- Shhh
Available for: iOS + Android
Free or paid? Free!
Features:
The Shh app is a must have for people who like and need power naps.
Extensive research into audio frequencies and sound engineering has led to the development of this app, that can have you asleep in as little as a few seconds.
Shh has a hassle-free, simple interface that allows you to choose between three modes. Night Sleep, Power Nap and Flight Sleep all have different variations of soothing noises that lull you to sleep almost instantly. The app works best with headphones, but can be used without.
One negative thing about this app is that it doesn’t act as an alarm clock as well; it only helps you fall asleep. This makes it easy to oversleep, so just be sure to set up another way to wake up.
- Sleepo
Available for: Android
Free or paid? Free to download, but offers some in-app purchases.
Features:
Sleepo is the ultimate app for relaxing sounds and ambiences. You can easily create your own mixes to keep them near at hand.
Its collection of thirty-two HD sounds are divided into four groups. Under Rain Sounds, you will find an eclectic mix of watery sounds, such as ocean waves, thunder, rain pattering on the window and more. Forest, creek and waterfall sounds are included in the Nature Sounds section, while the City Sounds section has mixes of trains, planes, fans and more urban noises.
Sleepo also boasts a collection of the most popular white noises.
This app doesn’t need an internet connection, making it easy to use anywhere you need it.
- Relax Melodies
Available for: Android
Free or paid? Free to download, but offers some in-app purchases.
Features:
Relax Melodies has a track record of being the number 1 app for sleep and relaxation. It has been featured in The Guardian, Mashable, Health Magazine and Amazon’s Best Apps.
Relax Melodies is an answer to insomnia, anxiety and nighttime anxiety, and can be used to calm infants and children as well.
You can choose from a library with over a hundred sounds to create your personal relaxing mix that works best for you. Sounds to choose from include nature sounds, white noise, brown noise, ambient melodies and binaural beats on 6 different frequencies to help you sleep, relax and dream.
Relax Melodies features a meditation section as well. With this you can combine your created sounds with guided meditations that help reduce stress and anxiety, develop a nap routine, fight insomnia and even get relief from tinnitus.
The app also offers a nifty bedtime reminder, and a timer that allows the sounds to fade out once you’ve gone to sleep.
- Calm
Available for: Android
Free or paid? Free to download, but offers some in-app purchases.
Features:
Calm might easily be one of the interesting apps on this list. While this app is mostly geared toward teaching meditation and mindfulness, it has a section devoted specifically to sleeping difficulties.
Sleep Stories is a collection of bedtime stories, geared specifically towards stressed-out adults. The approximately 40 minute long stories is guaranteed to help you relax and lull you into a restful sleep.
- Relax & Sleep Well
Available for: iOS + Android
Free or paid? Free!
Features:
Venturing into the realm of hypnotherapy, Relax & Sleep Well is a powerful healing meditation and hypnosis app that will help you get some amazing sleep-in.
Best-selling audio author Glenn Harold has over 20 years of experience in hypnotherapy and his sessions are helping more than 2 million people worldwide to overcome stress and sleep well.
The app’s background sound effects are recorded in specific frequencies and musical keys which serve to deepen the relaxing effect.
Relax & Sleep Well offers two free tracks, one on sleep hypnosis by Glenn Harold, and one on healing meditation, based on the ancient Solfeggio musical scale.
- Deep Sleep
Available for: iOS + Android
Free or paid? Paid.
Features:
Andrew Johnson’s sleep hypnosis app has been mentioned on Healthline’s Best Insomnia Apps of 2017. Based on Johnson’s acclaimed CD series, it has helped many people unwind and fight insomnia.
Deep Sleep offers step-by-step instruction to guide you into a relaxing sleep. The clear interface makes it easy to fully customize your session to fit your needs.
The app can also be set to remind you of your session at a certain time each day.
There you have it, folks.
Now that you’ve seen our list of apps to help you catch some shut-eye, comment on your own favorite below.
And don’t forget, a sleeping app works best when partnered with the perfect bed and a comfy blanket!
Please note that the list was not compiled with the help of a medical professional. If you have severe symptoms of insomnia please consult a doctor.
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