What to know
- iOS 18 update has removed iPhone’s Time in Bed feature.
- The iPhone’s ‘Time in Bed’ feature basically tracked if you physically picked up your phone at night and, by extension, determined if you were sleeping or not.
- Now only the Apple Watch can track if you were in bed sleeping or not.
Though welcomed and lauded for its new features, the iOS 18 update has also culled a few features that Apple didn’t think were useful enough. One such feature that your iPhone will stop supporting after the iOS 18 update is the ability to track ‘Time in Bed’ in the Health app. Here’s what you lose with the discontinuation of the feature and why it’s a loss for those who don’t like sleeping with their Apple Watches on.
iOS 18 update removes Time in Bed and Sleep Tracking on the iPhone
The Health app is the one iPhone app where you can view the history of different data points concerning your health. Until recently, your iPhone tracked and charted the time you spent in bed. Unfortunately, that time is now up.
The iOS 18 update now no longer supports tracking sleep and your time in bed. Although there’s a case to be made for whether the iPhone can even track sleep, tracking one’s time in bed, at least, is something that may be a sore miss for many. Here’s why.
Why the removal of ‘Time in Bed’ tracking feature from the iPhone will be sorely missed
The iPhone’s ‘Time in Bed’ feature allowed users to determine when they put aside their iPhone for the night and for how long their iPhone remained untouched. Sure, there’s only a tenuous connection between not touching the iPhone and having a good night’s sleep. After all, you could be tossing and turning in bed without touching your iPhone. But because not using your iPhone at night is loosely correlated with ‘going to sleep’, many users found it a good way to approximately know when they dozed off.
The iPhone’s Time in Bed tracking feature was also the only way to get those data points without having to wear your Apple Watch in bed. As for ‘tracking sleep’, the iPhone has never been able to do that, and only by implication of whether you physically picked up your iPhone did it tell you whether your sleep was continuous or broken.
Nevertheless, the iPhone’s Time in Bed tracking feature did have its uses. For what it’s worth, you can still get ‘Time in Bed’ tracking using your Apple Watch.
How it was useful:
A comment from the Redditor, user888ffr, sums up the feature’s use pretty neatly:
But some thought it was maybe a gimmick only:
Though, may users felt it was not really needed, anyway, as well put by Redditor, 0000KGP:
Where can you still get ‘Time in Bed’ feature?
After the iOS 18 update, it is only the Apple Watch that can provide you data points for Time in Bed and Sleep Tracking. Unlike the iPhone, the Apple Watch actually tracks your sleep using heart rate sensors, accelerometers, and machine learning algorithms. So, as many users have also reported, it’s possible that Apple is removing unnecessary features and streamlining the OS. At the same time, Apple is also pushing iPhone users to purchase Apple Watch as well, that is, if they want to continue getting information about their sleep.
