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About: Sleep Tracking

Hello everyone!

 

Recently, I've seen a few different questions about sleep tracking. Because of this, I thought I'd create a short tutorial on how to properly track sleep, how sleep tracking may be done with each device, and what the results look like on the Dashboard. We'll also be sure to touch on manually logging sleep. Let's begin!

 

Sleep Tracking: Sleep tracking is used to help quantify the hours- and better understand the quality- of your sleep. There are a number of different ways you can track your sleep, the easiest of which being using the sleep tracking functionality on your tracker itself, if possible (please note that neither the Fitbit Zip nor the Fitbit Ultra support sleep tracking). Finally, while the majority of users fall under the 'normal' category, we also have the sensitive sleep option for the users that do not. Be sure to take a look at our article, and set your sensitivity accordingly!

 

Flex- To enter sleep mode using your Flex, try rapidly tapping your device's display for a few seconds, or until you feel a vibration and a light pattern (simultaneously). @RickyFitbit provides a step-by-step in this post!

 

Fitbit One- To enter sleep mode one the Fitbit One, simply press and hold the button on the device for about 2.5 seconds, which is when you feel a vibration and your device's display turns into a stop watch. That stopwatch represents the amount of time in bed thus far.

 

Fitbit Force- Similar to the Fitbit One, you'll be pressing and holding the physical button on the device for about 2.5 seconds, which is when you would feel the vibration and your device's display turns into a stop watch. As of a October 2014, Force tracks sleep automatically! Simply wear your device to bed- when your tracker syncs with your account, you will be able to view your sleep stats on the dashboard.

 

Fitbit Charge, Charge HR, and Surge- Similar to the Fitbit Force, you Charge will allow you to track sleep automatically.  Simply wear your device to bed! An alternative option would be to press and hold the button on the device before and after sleep, similar to Force and Fitbit One.

 

Remember, it's important to put the device into sleep mode as you're getting into bed, and take it out of sleep mode once you're waking up. After your first sync since post wake-up, you will see a sleep quality graph on your Dashboard (MAC/PS/iOS device, Android device, or Windows Phone). Here's a few examples of the same graph using different platforms:

 

 

Finalsleepgraph.PNG
(Website Dashboard)

 

revised ios sleep.PNG
(iOS)
sleepimage2.png
(Android)
V__777C.jpg
(Windows Phone)

 

 

Now that we've covered tracking sleep with your device, we can cover what happens if you forget to log your sleep!

 

Manually Sleep Tracking- This method can be used for when users forget to track their sleep at night. The process uses the following steps:

 

  1. Go to your sleep log page.
  2. Enter the time you went to bed on the previous day. 
  3. Enter the time you left bed the day of.
  4. Select 'Log Sleep'
manual sleep.PNG

 

Afterwards, you should be all set! Your graph will appear as it would with tracker sleep recording across all platforms. Be sure to reach out with any and all questions!

 

Important notes:

  • After syncing, you'll see your sleep graph with three different sleep states (asleeprestless, and awake😞      

      -Asleep: When your body is completely at rest and unmoving.

      -Restless: This state indicates that your body transitioned from a very restful position with little movement to movement, such as turning over in bed. This doesn't necessarily mean that you were fully awake or cognizant of your movements, but it may indicate that you were not getting the most restful sleep possible at that time.

      -Awake: As the name of the state implies, this would indicate that you were moving so much that restful sleep would not be possible.

  • We use these three states of sleep to calculate your sleep efficiency, which is the most prominently displayed number on the sleep tile/graph. To learn more about the sleep states and sleep efficiency, check out this help article regarding sleep!
Community Moderator - English/EspañolEmerson | Community Moderator - English/Español

I run all over SF. What's your story?

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70 REPLIES 70
Thanks for posting! Much easier!
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NEED    HELP!   I have a flex and it tracked  my sleep and steps and then it stopped.  It would not track sleep or steps the reason the blue tooth was off.  BUT before i relaize it was the blue tooth. I put a toothpick in pin hole.  now it tracks my steps but not sleep.  it is got me crazy as i love the sleep mode.

sorry about typing not great at this if anyone can help  millions of thanks.

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On the second night of tracking sleep with my Charge, it recorded 5 different sleep periods with unreasonably high efficiency ( >=96%).  I tried to tell the dashboard I was in bed from about 22:20 to 11:30 the next day, but it says I have already recorded sleeps during that time period ( 5 of them!).  Combined, sleep efficiency would be about 50%.  How do I tell it to combine these?  At least in some of the dashboard stats it uses the total, not the max, of those sleeps.

Yes, I have the old man's problem of getting up in the middle of the night to pee.  Yes, I have sleep apnea, and all 3 doctor's solutions to that (CPAP, dental appliance, throat surgery) failed.  Part of the reason for getting fitbit was to be able to demonstrate that I sleep hardly at all with CPAP.  Oh, yes, it should give me more incentive to lose weight, too. 

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Gordon-B.

 

I'm no expert but I would try this.

Write down the Start time of the earliest sleep record.

Write down the End time of the latest sleep record.

When you hover your mouse in the Sleep Record there is a small icon that appears in the upper right corner that allows you to edit that Record.

Delete all but ONE of the Sleep Records.

Change the Record left with to Start and End times you wrote down.

 

Hopefully this will give you a correct combined Sleep Record.

 

As far as having to do this every nite, that would be annoying.

Others have said that you can start and stop a Sleep Record from the Sleep area in the Android and iOS apps. I wonder if using this method would override the auto start and stop.

Worth trying anyway.

 

A further thought I had was that for you it may be better to change to a Fitbit device that requires manually starting a Sleep Record. I have the Fitbit One which has a small button that I use to Start/Stop Sleep mode and to log any activities that I want to have a specific record for.

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When I had a Flex, I also noticed that while pushing a shopping cart at some stores (mainly WalMart) it would go in and out of sleep mode due to the bumpy cart or bumpy floor/parking lot.  This would sometimes throw my sleep tracking out of wack and I would have to manually adjust it.

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My question is... for tracking purposes, should I adjust my end sleep time back to when my alarm clock begins to go off?  I am a mom of 3 busy kids and I set my alarm early and most of the time I am awake between alarms but I hit snooze just to lay there with my eyes closed in the quiet.  Should I adjust back or leave it for the time when I actually get out of bed?  When I hit the snooze it does show awake/unrest times but I was mostly just looking for opinions. 

Side note: I am actually a deep sleeper and I fall asleep very fast (I do not watch TV or read in bed, just sleep, making it easier to fall asleep when I lay down) and am currently running between 96-98% efficiency. 

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I am also having trouble with sleep tracking. I know there is no reason to do it, so i am about to give up. Jus thought it would be fun to see, beyond the first two days it worked. These are very flawed pieces of tech. I already know i'm tired!
The activity that seems impossible today, will soon be your warm-up
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When I edit a sleep record on the Dashboard, even though I select "edit", after I edit the entry and select "update"  it gives me an error msg that I already have a sleep record for that date.  This particular entry started at 0030 (after midnight), but I have tried making the start 1130 pm and it still gives me the same error msg. 

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Hello

I recently started to experience a problem with the display information on my sleep tracking.

the dashboard shows on the graph the actual hours of sleep but the numbers displayed are incorrect.

 sample: last night I went to sleep at 10:30pm and wake up at 7am - 8.5 hours but the display says 4 hours 20 minutes

 

Thanks

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You didn't list Charge HR and the friggin manual doesn't address it. The box states it tracks sleep!
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Hi 

 

Hope someone can help me, I am new to Fitbit and have a Charge HR, when I first downloaded the app on my iphone 5 it showed sleep tracker, after a day the sleep tracker disppeared from the display and I would like to get it back, can anyone help?

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Thank you for the article. It was very helpful. My Charge HR was not recognizing (self detecting) the full duration of my sleep time. Now I know to manually prompt it as I do with exercise.

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I'm new and my charge has wrong start and stop sleep time -- when I try to edit I get the error saying a record already exists for that day.

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I purchased my Fitbit Charge a few weeks ago and it quit tracking my sleep through the nite. At first it did but now it shows my wake time way too early so that it shows I only got 3 or 4 hours sleep? I do get up at night to use the restroom but go right back to bed. I have a feeling that this is what is thinking I am awake at 3 or 4 in the AM. I usually sleep at least till 9AM. How can I get it to start tracking correctly again? 

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I have the Fitbit flex and I downloaded the app and I use it to put my Fitbit into sleep mode. For the past few days it has told me that I have gone to sleep but it is not breaking down how many times I wake up, am restless or how long it took me to go to sleep. What can I do to fix it?
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The fitbit tracks all the time and if you have multiple sleep times you need to combine them, just note the wakeup time from the latest report and then delete all the reports except the first one. Edit that first one to change the wake time and you should have an accurate report. All this does is pull out the sleep data between the two points that you want: go to sleep and wake. I get two or three reports for each sleep period and just remove two and edit the first with the actual wake time and it works fine.

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After reading this it worked for the first time even though I'd tried it many times before.  The only thing I did not see on my FLEX was the box with PREVIOUS DAY.  I am so relieved since I have never been successful at "tapping the FLEX into sleep mode I check to see if it's working before I go to bed.  Thank you!

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A couple days ago my sleep stopped displaying on my dashboard (on my iphone)  what happened?  and how do i get it back?

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Hello everyone. Thanks for taking a break from stepping to visit the Community. @salcal Hopefully you are now back on track. Let me know how it goes.

 

@mlcrotty Your sleep tile might be hidden. You can find here instructions to bring your tiles back on your iOS device. If this doesn't work, please uninstall and reinstall the Fitbit app. Hope this helps.

 

Catch you later. Smiley Very Happy

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I'd like to know why the Fitbit flex had the duration of how long it took you to go to sleep stats, and I upgraded to the Charge HR and now it doesn't have the stat, only the restless and awake stuff and total duration. I want that stat back, can they do an update to add it? I really want that information again. Especially since I upgraded, instead of feeling like I downgraded. Thanks/
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