How to record yourself sleeping on an iPhone
Put your iPhone beside the bed with the microphone uncovered, ideally on charge, and start a recording before you sleep. The hard part isn't recording, it's the morning: nobody listens to eight hours of audio. What you need is something that finds the few moments worth hearing.
Where to put your phone
- Beside the bed, at about head height: a bedside table is ideal.
- Microphone uncovered. Not under a pillow or face down on a soft surface.
- On charge, if you can. A whole night of recording uses battery.
- Away from fans and humidifiers if you can, so they don't cover the sounds you want to hear.
Why Voice Memos isn't enough
A voice recorder will happily capture eight hours. Then you have eight hours. Scrubbing through it for a snore or a sentence takes longer than the night did, and a 2 a.m. cough is easy to miss at double speed. The value of recording a night is in finding the moments, not in keeping the hours.
What you'll hear
Mostly nothing, which is good news. Then snoring, sometimes in long episodes; sleep talking or laughing; coughing; breathing sounds; and everything else in a bedroom: a partner, a pet, a door, traffic.
Recording someone else
Record only yourself, or people who have agreed to it. A partner who shares the room should know the phone is recording.
In Snorezy
How Snorezy records a night
Tap Record and put the phone down. Recording continues while the iPhone is locked. Sound is analysed on your iPhone as the night goes, and by default only the moments it detects are kept; you can choose to save the whole night as well. In the morning the night is laid out as a timeline, with every sound in its place and ready to play.
Audio is kept for 7, 30 or 90 days, or until you delete it, and you choose which.
Questions
Does recording all night drain the battery?
Recording for a whole night uses power, which is why we suggest keeping the phone on charge. We haven't published a battery figure, because we haven't measured one across devices yet.
How much storage does a night take?
With the default mode, only detected moments are kept, which is small. Saving the whole night takes much more. Snorezy shows how much audio it's storing under Storage & Privacy, and deletes old audio automatically on the schedule you choose.