Pillow: Sleep Tracker reviews
What users love and hate, from real reviews
An audio-based sleep tracker with a smart alarm and snore recording that for years rode on its beloved gentle wake-up — and has now buried core features behind a yearly subscription while bumping up against the inaccuracy of mic-only tracking.
What users love
When it works, the gentle light-sleep wake-up is genuinely loved
The thing people praise year after year: the smart alarm catches your light-sleep phase and wakes you without stress, so you get up rested even at 5 a.m. For many it's fixed their sleep schedule over the long haul.
It always feels like I'm rested even though it maybe a 5 am wake up time. I highly recommend.
because of their patent technology it worked for me. i was strugguling to wake up very early in morning but not able to wake up, tried many apps but none worked perfectly
It not only presents me with statistics but also manages the wake up alarm through its Light sleep detection.. Just a chef's kiss ..
Long-term data and sleep awareness keep people for years
A loyal core keeps records for 3-10 years: they value the historical graphs, the journal and understanding their own patterns. Some found out about apnea thanks to the sound recordings; for chronic insomniacs it's "finally, data".
As a Chronic Insomniac of 30 years this app is a godsend. It provides something I've wanted all this time. Data.
Whilst it won't help my insomnia it allows me to analyse and change my patterns to help.
phenomenal and it helped me find out i have sleep apnea
What users hate
The smart alarm that was free for years suddenly went premium
The single feature that made people install the app — waking you in light sleep — got moved behind the paywall with no warning, dressed up as "bug fixes". Long-time users took it as a betrayal and are uninstalling in droves.
made smart alarm paid only when it was free for like 10 years
the only feature that made the app worth using in the first place is now paid. uninstalled
...and under the guise of "bug fixes and updates" the wake-up-easy function is not available to free accounts anymore. Enshittification successful, app uninstalled.
Mic-only tracking marks you asleep while you're wide awake
The app listens for silence and equates it with sleep: people lie awake for hours, get up for the bathroom, watch videos on their phone — and the chart still shows a flat line of deep sleep and a 90+% score. Anyone who tests the tracker catches it out night after night.
I was awake for 2,5 hours just thinking and thinking and i could not sleep, but this app shows that as deep sleep somehow LMAO
The app says I was in DEEP SLEEP from 4 to 8!
Many nights I've woken up and even gone to the toilet, and it thinks I've slept the whole way through.
The free trial flips into a yearly charge you can't undo
People cancel before the trial ends and still get hit with a $40-50 charge for a full year, then can't find anywhere to cancel: Google Play shows no subscription, the website sends you back to Google Play. The promised pre-charge reminder never arrives.
I tried to cancel my subscription before the trial date ended. apparently it didn't go through because I was notified that I was charged $46.49 I immediately cancelled as soon as I got the notice of payment charges.
Actually impossible to cancel this God damn subscription. Can't do it in play store (simply doesn't appear). Can't do it on the website because it says to go to play store. Great feedback loop of insanity.
I relied on their word that they would remind me before I was charged. I ended up being charged 40$ without an option for a refund.
A paywall hits before you've even seen the app once
The price isn't shown in the store: you install, sign up, hand over your sleep data — and only then learn that almost everything is paid and you can't even start the trial without a card. Many call it a dark pattern and uninstall on the spot.
i used it, and 6 days later, i got charged $43.49...and i only found out about the charge when I checked my bank
it's not free, it's 7 days free IF you give your banking details 🤣🤣 nice try.
Asking me to want to pay for something or even as a trial before I've even used it? No free option? Instant uninstall.
Yearly subscription only — no monthly plan, no one-time buy
There's no monthly tier and no way to buy the app once: the only option is paying ~$40 a year up front. People who'd happily pay in smaller chunks bail precisely because of the lack of flexibility.
They only have an annual billing option too.
great app, but very disappointed that I am either forced to sign up for a whole year or just use the free version. I prefer a monthly subscription, and that is what is keeping me from signing up for premium.
the app is great but I can buy the mounthly premum only the yearly
Ignores the watch and won't pull sleep data from wearables
Despite a WearOS version, the app still leans on the phone mic alone, ignores heart rate and motion from the watch, and loses to the built-in Samsung Health and Garmin trackers people already have for free.
I use a Galaxy Watch 7 for sleep measurement, but Sleep Cycle *ONLY* uses phone sensor data despite having a WearOS version.
Doesn't use any biometric data from your watch. 😂 Just "listens" using your phone's mic?
doesn't really bring anything new beyond what smart watches already track and do. update: it just uses phone microphone lol
An alarm you can't trust — sometimes it just doesn't go off
The app silently dies overnight, and the alarm either doesn't fire at all or only rings when you open the app yourself — hours late. Because of that people keep a backup alarm in the phone's stock clock.
unreliable, I've used it for years but every so often the alarm just won't go off. I have to set a backup alarm from the phones clock app.
when the alarm is supposed to go off it doesn't and causes you to miss your wake-up time.
the alarm hasn't sounded. Luckily I have a back up alarm.
Snore and sleep-sound recording randomly drops out
The headline draw — hearing your snoring and sleep-talking — works only intermittently: it serves up a blank day, picks up random noise instead of the real thing, or plays back just a fragment of the audio. Whole nights simply go missing.
doesnt detect noises it should detect. picks up other random noises despite adjusting settings.
There is no audio available for the last two nights.
by the second day the playback would only play a brief part of the audio
A low-battery alarm wakes you mid-night even while charging
A sleep app jolts you awake with a loud alert over a "dying battery" — sometimes at 60% charge or while plugged in — and won't stop. People can't fall back asleep afterward; one describes a panic attack.
I plugged it in. this app KEPT going off about the low battery over and over even though it was plugged in.
they will wake you up in the middle of the night just to plug in your phone!
It keeps telling me my battery is dying although I's be on 60% battery, then it wakes me up 2:45AM in the morning saying my battery is just about to die.
Forced sign-up and an unskippable intro scare you off at launch
To track your own sleep on your own phone you now need an account, and launch plays a long animation you can't skip and that restarts if you reopen the app. Some people uninstall before ever reaching the features.
I don't want to sign up for an account to track my own sleep on my own phone.
do I look like I want to watch an unskippable intro? NO!
Setup is so slow, nice animations but cannot skip it and waiting to load, just to get to a screen which I am forced to login to use the app?!? Uninstalled!
Can't handle multiple sleeps a day — a nap erases the night
The app allows only one sleep episode per day: take a nap and it deletes the night's data, and you can't edit or split the session — only delete the whole thing. For anyone who sleeps in two phases, the stats fall apart.
The app allows only ONE sleep event per day. if it THINKS you've MAYBE nodded off on the sofa for 20 mins it totally deletes the fact you woke up 10hrs before.
second sleep erases any data from first and statistics show I slept 2 hours for a few days of week
Doesn't handle multiple periods of sleep well.
You can't really get your own sleep data out
There's no detailed export: the dump gives only metadata, you can't get the minute-by-minute picture, and on Android even the sleep stages (REM) and detailed breakdown are stripped down versus iOS. The data exists but it's locked inside the app.
Doesn't export detailed data. Why is it none of these apps do that!!! Sick of investing time to set it all up do a night's recording only to find out that I can't see the minute by minute data. Exporting the data just exports the metadata.
No accurate recording of REM sleep. Please make it equal quality for both apple and Android.
Very disappointed that it won't track sleep stages (like REM) on Android (only does that on iOS).