Merge multiple sleep fragments into one sleep log and score

[PeterMikl]

I am constantly being awakened in the middle of the night because I have 4-year old twins (one with autism which means his sleep cycle is all over the map). When I am awakened, I am usually moving around (taking kids to the toilet, changing night-time nappies, soothing kids with bad dreams, switching beds to better quieten a kid so the rest of the house can sleep, getting a glass of water, etc.). I also use the Surge automatic sleep recording feature to track my sleep. I don't want to have to sstart or stop recording anything manually.

On many nights, if I get up, the Surge will create multiple sleep logs. At 4am, it has done this when I have been awake for 9 minutes or more. At 7am, it has done this when I have been up for less than a minute - and yes, sometimes I go back to bed after 7am while my wife takes over after my nighttime "shift". These multiple sleep logs are inaccurate because that 9 minutes, or 1 minute, or whatever it is isn't counted as awake time.

All I need is a single command to merge the multiple logs into a single log with the gaps between logs calculated as awake time. This would solve all the display issues with multiple logs, and give me a much clearer view of my entire night. I would have a single sleep pattern graph and a single sleep log calculation.

Moderator Edit: Clarified subject and labels

[NeedSleep10]

This morning my fitbit recorded less than two hours of sleep although it was one of my best night's sleeps!  This morning, Feb. 2, 2020, I was up for 24 minutes in between two sleep periods, the second one being close to 5 hours.  My Sleep Number Bed told me I had almost 8 hours of sleep, 6.9 of them "restful".  But because fitbit didn't combine the two sleep periods, I have NO indication of how much REM and how much deep sleep I get, the reason I look at my fitbit stats every morning.....

[NeedSleep10]

Since January 2020 when I obtained my Fitbit Charger 3, I have placed several posts about the problem I have had with the Fitbit software not always combining interrupted sleep sessions  (all taking place during NORMAL sleep hours). MANY nights a week (35% to 45% of the time), I get out of bed for 20 minutes to a little over an hour in the middle of the night, and then return to bed to attempt to sleep to get at least 7 hours (I still prefer 8).

I need the fitbit software to combine the sessions so that I can see the amount of REM and deep sleep I had.  I am working on an anxiety-reducing approach to increase the percentages of these kinds of sleep, as well as the overall duration of my sleep.

 I suspect the Fitbit software developers have changed something, because the different sleep sessions are now combined more frequently for me.  But perhaps it is just because I work harder to get back to bed sooner than I like.

NOTE:  I have found that often a combining of broken sleep sessions happens only much later than the usual morning Fitbit sync after I get up (that didn't occur today, though).  

But tonight, although according to my sleep number bed, I had an unusually good night's sleep, the Fitbit software saw only my first sleep session, which ended a little before 5 am.  49 minutes later (according to my Sleepnumber bed, which can't track REM or deep sleep), I went back to bed and slept to around 8:30, when I was awoken by a phone call.  

I would sure like to see all my sleep sessions between 9 pm and 9 am combined (even the ones that occur on the rare occasion when I fall asleep sitting on the couch)!  

To any developer who would like to look at the nights when two sleep sessions didn't get combined for me, here are the dates during the month of February:  Feb. 9, Feb. 16, Feb. 20, Feb. 26.  The length of the break between the two sleep sessions was fairly long for these nights:  27 minutes, 47 minutes, 26 minutes, and 49 minutes.  But there were many other nights in February when I was out of bed for longer than the smaller of these numbers of minutes, but the software kindly combined my two sleep sessions (for instance, in Feb.: 1st - 3rd,  8th, 10th, 11th, 13th-15th, 18th, 22nd, 23rd;  the sleep sessions were combined although I was out of bed for more than an hour on Jan. 29th.)

I would of course wish for something different if I had to sleep days or had two very mixed sleep patterns, like my neighbor, who has to be at work at 5 am some mornings (so goes to bed by 9 pm the night before) and doesn't work at all three days a week (when he goes to bed much later and likes to sleep until 11 am or noon).

[NeedSleep10]

Note to moderator:  It would be nice to know the algorithm being used to combine sleep sessions (which combining does occur, just not often enough for some of us).

And it would be nice to know if this issue has been taken up by developers as something to look into.  And any info on the status and timing of any possible changes.

I do appreciate my Fitbit VERY much!

[Guroose]

On occasion, my sleep is interrupted, after which I return to sleep. Instead of tracking and accumulating the sleep sessions, only one is recorded. Should be able to have more than one in a day.

Moderator edit: added label

[EdsonFitbit]

Hi @Guroose, thank you for your suggestion about being able to track multiple sleep incidents per day.

Currently, your Fitbit device can do it, in fact it detects and records naps that are at least an hour long.

If on your second sleep incident you didn't have at least 3 consecutive hours of sleep, you'll be able to see a sleep pattern which includes your time spent awake, restless, and asleep. In order to get sleep stages (light sleep, deep sleep, and REM) you need to follow these instructions.

Whether this is not your case, please let me know.

[NeedSleep10]

I have entered a similar suggestion along these lines. This week has frustrated me badly again.  Most nights I have to be out of bed for a single period (once for two periods).  These "breaks" are from 15 minutes to an hour and 15 minutes each night, before I can go back to sleep.  These last 8 days, one day I left my fitbit charging.  But out of the remaining 7 days my sleep was "broken in two" on 4 out of the 7 evenings.  Last night I was up for 41 minutes (I know because of my Sleepnumber bed), and the other three I was up for a little more than an hour. (I often get caught in a TV program.)   This was happening when I first started using the fitbit in January, and then it stopped happening from March 7 to March 16. In that early March period, there were many nights I was up for more than 41 minutes, and one when I was up for more than an hour, and on all those nights, ALL the pairs of sleep sessions were combined. Covid-19 is making me want to watch until the end of a TV program more often, and I often do a few household tasks as well when I'm up.  It would SO help to have my two sleep sessions combined.  I go to bed between 10 and 1 and AIM to have slept 7-8 hours (not counting the long break I may have to take).  I am working hard to increase my REM and deep sleep, because my day is much better when I have more.  That is why I look at my fitbit sleep results every day!  Sadly I rarely get even 50% of the amount of those two levels of sleep that are recommended.  So I pay attention to the days I get more of these two kinds of sleep to try to figure out why.  But whenever the two sleep sessions of the night are not combined, the data is useless to me.  (It takes great physical exhaustion or antihistamines to get me to sleep through the night, and antihistamines seem to suppress both REM and deep sleep.  Moreover, with antihistamines, I'm sluggish the following day, so they're no solution.)

[NeedSleep10]

To the moderator:  Your answer to glucose didn't help me.  What do I have to do to get the fitbit software to combine two session (or three) during a single night.  Sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn't.

Most of the times that the fitbit didn't combine the two sleep sessions, I was out of bed for more than an hour.  But last night I worked hard to get back to bed in 41 minutes and it neither showed me the second session (seen as a "nap", even though it's in the middle of the night?) nor combined it with the first session (I slept around 7.2 hours, 6.8 of them not restless, according to my bed; the fitbit only saw the first 3 hours and 55 minutes.)

I hope the developers will fix this for me.  But if they're unwilling, I need to know what I can do when I get up in the middle of the night to guarantee that my two sleep sessions will be combined.

[Faeriellyn]

When it splits the night's sleep the graphs are not detailed and no REM sleep is logged. I would want to merge the split logs. It does seem to have a problem with multiple sleep session in one day. I should be able to sleep from Midnight to 7am and that evening go to bed a 9pm etc. I needs to be able to just track my sleep sessions in detail no matter what. The split would not be as bad if the detail was available when it splits.

If I could take the Edit and take the first sleep session and change the end time to the final wake up time it should know to merge the splits that occurred to one sleep session.

[Rich_Laue]

As long as the awake is an hour or less, the two periods will be merged. 

I often get two periods a night, both with sleep stages and a score. 

The summary on the dashboard does merge these two periods. 

[SunsetRunner]

Having two scores is not an experience I have had

Having no score for2 hours and under and a low score for the remainder of
time is more common

I wish the hour wake time was configurable

[SunsetRunner]

When I wake in the middle of the night, and then go back to sleep, which is EVERY NIGHT, if I am awake more than 1 hour, the fitbit interprets and scores each half of the night. What I need to be able to do, is in the app add these two segments together so that the sleep score is figured again, and so that the benchmark totals are added.

[Sidsousa]

You can already do that... Just go the the first sleep record, click on the pencil to edit it and change the wake up time. Refresh the home page and it's done😁

[SunsetRunner]

Thanks for the suggestion! I tried this just now. For my app, it wasn't a pencil but three dots in upper right that allows me to edit the sleep record. If I do as you suggest, going to the earlier record to edit the wake up time as later, it says it can't do it because there is another record for that time. If I delete the later record and try again, it says I can't change the wake up time to the future. So, ???

It seemed like a great idea but this isn't working in the version I'm using. (fitbit ver.3.22, ios ver. 13.2.3 on iPad gen5)

[Sidsousa]

Well I'm using the Android app and I've had cases like that and it worked.

i suggest that you delete the last record (the second sleeping phase of the night) and refresh that dashboard several times or maybe refresh and wait like 5 minutes and then go back to edit the wake up time then the app will determine the real sleep time.

This is totally doable because I'll do it at least 5/6 times per month. 

Remember refresh and wait, usually in my case it takes lots of refreshes to make it appear correctly.

[SunsetRunner]

OK, this is strange, there may have been a delay or some other problem but when I tried a few minutes later the app allowed me to change the wakeup time. Because I had deleted the second record, I didn't know when that was but I guessed. So even though the second record had been deleted, the data did appear just as you said it would. So is there a re-syncing that had to occur to get the data from the tracker again, or was it still stored in the app even though the second record had been deleted? The process doesn't appear to be seamless but it did eventually work. Thanks so much!

[Sidsousa]

I think the time it takes to evaluate the real sleep time is a mixture of the re sync and the calculation that the app will do after you delete the log.

So yes, after deleting or adding something you'll have to refresh or wait for it to accept the changes. 

[SunsetRunner]

I was able to consolidate five more without refreshing. Thanks so much for your help, this has doubled the usefulness of the app for me!

[YojanaFitbit]

Hi @SunsetRunner, thanks for explaining why you would like to have the option to merge multiple Sleep Logs into one. Thanks for sharing your feedback. I've moved it into a similar request.  A lot of users are asking for this option, I hope we receive updates soon.

[Howeyb]

Sometimes the sleep logs are continuous even with awakenings such as washroom breaks but often the sleep logs are split and missing time chunks. The suggestions from fitbit are always the same and do not solve the problem. This needs a software fix.

Moderator Edit: Clarified subject

[YojanaFitbit]

Hi @Howeyb, and thanks for taking the time to share this suggestion about preventing split sleep logs on the Fitbit app. We rely on feedback like yours to help us develop products and features that we know our community wants to see. If this suggestion receives votes from other customers and gains popularity, it will be shared internally with various teams at Fitbit. To learn more about how Fitbit decides which suggestions get developed, visit our FAQs.

Watch this space for status updates. In the meantime, try visiting Health & Wellness to talk with other members about all things health and fitness.

[LizzyFitbit]

Hi @Howeyb and Guroose. Thanks for taking the time to explain why you'd like to have your multiple sleep logs merged automatically into a single log with us. This idea was already requested in the Feature Suggestions board, so I’ve moved your posts here. This will help us to keep the forums organized and make sure the suggestions don't get confused, or split a popular vote. Click on the thumbs-up to show your support and keep adding your suggestions.

[ricforgrp]

If I wake to go to the bathroom, it assumes I have stopped sleeping (true) but then the stats the next morning are in 2 pieces which is difficult to compare to other nights. Fitbit or the user could set a lag which would allow the night to be in one data set. The lag would be considered "awake" time rather than a new night.

[LizzyFitbit]

Hi @ricforgrp. Thanks for taking the time to share this suggestion about being able to have one single sleep log instead of multiple logs in the Fitbit app. This idea was already requested in the Feature Suggestions board, so I’ve moved your post here. While this isn't currently planned at this moment, we have left voting open so we can keep tracking this request over time. To learn more about how Fitbit decides which suggestions get developed, visit our FAQs.

[jazzbrag]

By deleting all fragments, then adding a new manual log, i.e. start time and wake time, Versa 2 will eventually figure out the right analysis.  You might have to soft boot your phone to get the reading.  This from the original poster of this suggestion.

[RichW30]

Like to see the ability to collapse or expand the day sleep instead of seeing separate entries for separated sleep patterns. It would be nice to be able to collapse or expand the day like Excel does in a Pivot table.