When I put my watch into bedtime mode, the tracking is delayed

[cmarks85]

Hi Fitbit, 

I've only ever played around with bedtime mode a little, but now I need to use it to gather some sleep information. I do use my watch for exercising and it's exceptional at that.

My problem... When I use bedtime mode and I go to bed at 10pm... The tracking does not start at 10pm... It starts at some random time. Why does it not start at 10pm? 

Last night I go to sleep at 10pm, I wake up at 11pm wide awake and walk around the house, get some water, go to the toilet, make a hot water bottle. But now it's tracking me as I`m in a light sleep and awake at the same time? From 11pm... What happened to the first hour? I can go in an "edit" to add the lost hour but there is no sleep information. 

I`m using a Pixel 2 watch, Pixel 8 Pro Phone. Keep Fitbit updated.

(I've noticed this issue from day one but I've never used the app like this properly, I hate wearing watches, and the HR sensor burns my skin after wearing it for a while)

*Photo with correct sleep times.

[JohnnyRow]

First, I'm not sure what you mean by "bedtime mode".  There is a place in settings where you can set your bedtime and wake time. If that is what you mean, it has no effect on sleep detection.  I think there is a place where you can compare your actual sleep to the goal your set there. Also you can set a notice to tell you it is time to get ready for bed, based on that time.  But that's all.

As for actual sleep detection, your sleep has to be at least one hour to be detected, and has to be at least 3 hours to get sleep stages and a sleep score.  Sometimes, if one gets up during the night, it breaks your sleep into two sessions but sometimes it won't break it up - don't know if it is a time limit or steps or what.  And sometimes if it doesn't look right right away when I get up, if I wait an hour it fixes itself.

If it does get broken into 2 sections, you might miss one section, but have to scroll to the bottom of the sleep screen to see other sleep.

[cmarks85]

In my fitbit pixel watch... You hit bedtime mode... Yes, that is the problem... Why is it waiting an hour to track my sleep? Start tracking it right away, no? I fall asleep quite easily after 10mins. 

In running mode when I walk, it continues to track my run even if I have stopped running to take a break. One would think that enabling sleep time mode / bed time mode it would continually track your movements / HR or what ever it does until you wake up the following morning and hit stop?

Why break the data up into sections? Just do a start to finish just like other activities fitbit caters for.

[cmarks85]

Thank you for your reply too 🙂

[JohnnyRow]

I don't have pixel watch. I guess Android app is different there, sorry.

Aha!  Just read your part about hitting stop next morning.  That sounds like on my phone app, if I tap the floating plus sign neat bottom right, I get several options pop up, one of which is "Start sleep".  And then when I wake up, there is a button to press saying I am awake.  Does that sound like what you are using, maybe worded differently?
If so, that should not be used to track nightly sleep.  I actually did read that in the fitbit Help section several years ago though I think its been taken out a few rewrites and re-orgs or the Help section ago. That really is just left over from before fitbits had heart rate trackers to use to detect sleep.  The only use for it now is if you are going to take a nap that might be less than an hour so fitbit will probably not detect it but you still want to get credit for that sleep time.

As for running mode continuing when you pause, there actually is a setting you can change for that, but I won't get into right here and now.

[cmarks85]

Yes, that exactly what I`m doing on my watch though - Start bedtime mode / Stop bedtime mode. I spoke with Fitbit and they said it doesn't start tracking until it detects 1hr of you not moving... But I would love it to start tracking when I hit Start bedtime mode, again I`m asleep very quickly and it fails to capture. 

I know you can pause your workouts, or it`ll detect if you've stopped after a period. But... It starts tracking the minute you say "GO".

Minor issues, they lodged a ticket for me. Again thank you for your help and reply.

[gdio53]

@cmarks85 

I have a PW3, and use the watch to start and stop bedtime mode.  When I stop bedtime mode in the morning and sync with the Fitbit app, it shows the times I started and stopped bedtime mode on the watch, if it's not within the schedule I set.  I have a PW2 and get the same results when I wear it to bed.

The auto mode is for when you don't have a schedule set or start bedtime mode manually, it will start tracking after 1 hour.

Have you checked for updates to the apps on your watch?

Have you tried restarting your watch and phone?

[JohnnyRow]

I'll give my version one more time, then let it go:
"it doesn't start tracking until it detects 1hr of you not moving" - which means it is for detecting your sleep from movement rather than from heart rate, which is the old-time way of measuring sleep before they had heart-rate tracking, and the better way is to just not use that at let the watch figure it out on its own.

[alexthecat]

@cmarks85 I think you are misunderstanding the purpose of Bedtime Mode on your Pixel Watch. Bedtime Mode disables notifications and turns off your display. It is not a way to track sleep. Bedtime Mode is similar to Theater Mode on your Watch. It's just a quick way to disable certain features.

Sleep tracking automatically starts when your Watch detects that you are asleep and ends when it detects that you are awake. If your Pixel Watch 2 detects that you're asleep, it will automatically turn on Bedtime Mode if you have that feature enabled. You can get detailed sleep tracking even without manually turning on Bedtime Mode.

It is possible to start and stop sleep tracking in the Fitbit app. If you do that, you will not get sleep details though. It's generally not advised to do that, unless you only want sleep start time and end time and nothing in between.

Also, you mentioned it not tracking your first hour of sleep. That happens sometimes, if you wake up during that hour, especially if you get up and start moving around. Your Watch uses motion and heart rate patterns to detect that you are sleeping. It takes an hour to do that. If you edit that start time of your sleep and sync a couple of times, you should get some data for that hour. Here's the graph for a night that I had to do that and you can see that the data for that first hour is not very meaningful. My watch really didn't know what was going on during that hour.