What Is Sleep Mode On Fitbit? And Why You Should Use It!

What Does Sleep Mode Do On Fitbit?

Sleep Mode on Fitbit trackers can be thought off as a derivative of DND (Do Not Disturb) feature. With added benefits that during the time your tracker is under its influence, your sleeping cycles would be recorded by the tracker and at the end of activity (Or when you’d wake up) shown to you in the Fitbit app.

In hindsight, it is quite simple in its working nature, and it make sense why it is even there. Fitbit has always remained hyper attentive towards the needs to track bodily vitals. Their identity resolves around words like ‘Fitness’ and ‘Health.’ So it is not a surprise Fitness brand has added it in their recent releases.

“But what does it exactly do?”

Sleep Mode is basically just like any other feature that you’d find on your Fitness tracker. It is made to track different stages of sleep that a wearer undergoes during the night, reports about individual cycles, monitors the time period spent in bed, counts the number of times a wearer wakes up, and lastly give a score based on different metrics. If you’d be a subscriber to Fitbit Premium you might get access to other intuitive data too, just for the sake of using sleep mode, you won’t need to pay. It is built-in and it is free.

How Sleep Mode Works On Fitbit?

Before we take a dive to learn how Fitbit has implemented the system, let’s take a look at the strings that comes attached with the mode.

As stated above there are clearly many similarities between the DND (Do Not Disturb) and Sleep Mode. While under either of them your Fitbit tracker doesn’t alert about notifications, trophies, or even incoming calls or text, sleep mode goes one step ahead and conceal the control of device to a greater extent. Much like Water Lock feature.

During the time it would be turned on your tracker’s brightness would be dimed, Always-On function would be disabled, and even if you’d swing your arm like a maniac Fitbit wouldn’t wake up until you manually disable the sleep mode.

How Can I Turn On Sleep Mode On My Fitbit?

It is quite easy, all you’d need to do is go to settings in your tracker. Go to the ‘Sleep Mode‘ and from there turn on the option. To align the smartwatch with your sleeping routine you can also schedule your Fitbit with start and end time for the sleep mode to work around.

Golden Tip: Use Fitbit clock face like My Sleeping Animal for better integration of Sleep Mode into your lifestyle.

Ok Now Tell Me How Can I Switch Off Sleep Mode?

Since Fitbit wouldn’t turn off the Sleep Mode even after you wake up, it is important to understand how you can do it. So you have two options, one is to do it through the quick settings, all you would’ve to do is go to watch face, open quick setting menu from there, and click on half-moon/crescent and disable it.

The other is little juvenile but it is just reverse of how you turned on the mode in first place, go to settings and disable the mode from there.

Another Golden Tip: If you’re confused about Sleep Mode icon check our guide on Fitbit symbols.

How Fitbit Track Our Sleep Using Sleep Mode?

Fitbit takes into account more than one physical reading to make a decision. With HRV (Heart Rate Variability) and time elapsed since ideal idle state maintained (In Fitbit case an Accelerometer is used to determine the moving changes to wearer position) is closely monitored to begin reading. Hence In theory you could be awake but if statue alike with falling RHR (Resting Heart Rate) your tracker can assume you’ve fallen asleep.

In practice it is not the most efficient way to begin the testing, for now that is what the Fitness brand has to offer, and it is alright – to an extent. Considering Fitbit reports have shown tracker having 69% accuracy in any given 30 second time window.

“So Fitbit would check my heart rate and body position to assume about my status?”

Yes. If your health tracker would find no changes in your position and your heart rate would keep on dropping until maintaining itself at certain value.

About The Science Of Deep Sleep Tracking…

Fitbit tracks the following four three cycles and report about them. The stage 2 and stage 3 NREM are defined by Fitbit as deep-sleep while stage 1 is classified as light-sleep. However, a better way to explain the sleep cycles are following:

• NREM (Non-Rapid Eye Movement) Stage 1: This is the lightest stage of sleep, often referred to as “drowsiness.” The body is in the process of transitioning from wakefulness to sleep and is easily awakened.
• NREM Stage 2: This stage is characterized by a decrease in body temperature, heart rate, and breathing. The brain waves also slow down and become more regular. This stage of sleep makes up the majority of the sleep cycle.
• NREM Stage 3: This is the deepest stage of non-REM sleep, also known as “slow-wave” or “delta” sleep. The brain produces very slow, large waves and the body becomes less responsive to external stimuli. This stage is considered the most restorative for the body and is important for physical recovery and growth.
• REM (Rapid Eye Movement) Sleep: This is the stage of sleep when the brain is highly active, the eyes move rapidly and the body becomes temporarily paralyzed. REM sleep is associated with vivid dreaming and increased heart rate and breathing. This stage of sleep is important for cognitive and emotional well-being.

It’s important to note that the body goes through these stages of sleep in a cyclical pattern, with about 50-60 minutes for each cycle. During the night, the body goes through 4-6 cycles of NREM-REM sleep.

Older Fitbit devices were incapable to track the sleep using this model. So what Fitbit had done was implement a workaround with Sleep Phases. In practice, it was highly flawed model with little to no value. Thankfully, since the arrival of Fitbit Blaze company has moved forward from it.

What Is The Right Way To Track Sleep?

While there are many methods widely used to track the sleeping patterns:

• Polysomnography
• Actigraphy
• Sleep diary
• Sleep questionnaires
• Home Sleep Testing (HST)

The golden standard is Polysomnography and given the accurate result it drives, there should be no doubts in accepting as the right method, but why is it the right method? Or what is it?

What Part?

For Polysomnography a person scalp, face, and limbs are attached to electrodes with different point of interest. Each recording the different aspect of human body like brain activity (EEG), eye movements (EOG), muscle activity (EMG), heart rate, breathing, and oxygen level in bloodstream. By the end of the session data collected by the different sensors is mashed to draw conclusions and identify any if present sleep disorder.

Why Part?

“Okay that explains the what part, but what about why is it the right method?”

Polysomnography is considered the most trustworthy method for detecting sleep disorders because of its multi-parametric approach and its ability to provide a comprehensive analysis of an individual’s sleep patterns.

The process includes the examination of different sleep stages, their duration and their classification. Additionally, the study is performed in a laboratory environment which removes external elements that could impact sleep, such as noise or light. This ensures the most precise evaluation of a person’s sleep and is why PSG is known as the gold standard in sleep analysis.

Are Fitbits Accurate For Sleep Tracking?

By now we have established the fact that your Fitbit tracker shouldn’t be relied upon when reliability can be single point of failure. It has to be understood, explained, and acknowledged that in spite the Fitbit exceptionalism there would always be attached uncertainty to it’s reporting. And if you are wondering it is the case with just Sleep Mode, it isn’t.

Digital wearables, however tuned, holds a certain disadvantage in comparison to dedicated devices made to perform the same action. They simply don’t have the capability to outperform or even perform like their other counterparts, and it is not down to faulty mechanics or lackluster effort. Given the nature of their built, technical specifications, and target audience it’d always be unrealistic expectation to expect the better results.

Hence Fitbit tracker not giving 100% accurate results is fine. More so if you consider it is not always about accuracy Fitbit provide value in other forms too. If you’d do the honor to subscribe to their premium service ($11/month) your tracker can give detailed analysis on snoring too.

In order to use the feature you’d have to actually turn on Snore Detection and your Fitbit would substantially use battery to make a strong case (Fitbit suggest having at least 40% battery before going to bed) by the end of night, you best believe a juicy report would be waiting for you. With further insights to improve for better. 

How To Increase Deep Sleep On Fitbit Trackers?

Taking into account the method Fitbit has implemented to turn on Sleep Mode, it’s difficult to give sure fire tips. Following few can help to turn around the leaf

• Always make sure to at least have slept 3 hours before checking the record.
• As Fitbit uses heart rate sensor it is vital for optimal monitoring to have sufficient contact between your arm and the tracker. Keep it intact and close.
• For comfortability you can always switch the tracker to your non-dominant arm. Reports show little to no change in reading when done so.

In happenstance your Fitbit tracker stops reading your sleep records, delve deeper into the problem. However, it might seem there is always a ways to turn things around, and yes it includes Fitbit too.