Sleep Cycle - Tracker & Sounds reviews
What users love and hate, from real reviews
An alarm-and-sleep tracker that listens to the room through the phone mic and wakes you during light sleep — but its defining tension is that the beloved smart wake-up got moved behind a paywall, while the tracker itself often logs time awake as deep sleep.
What users love
The light-sleep wake-up is what people genuinely stay for
The core thing people love is the gentle, gradually rising wake-up that catches a light-sleep phase and lifts you without a jolt. Users can't go back to a normal alarm for years: they wake up rested even at 5am, and silence it with a tap of the phone.
I can't use anything else to wake up in the morning. It always feels like I'm rested even though it maybe a 5 am wake up time. I highly recommend.
It not only presents me with statistics but also manages the wake up alarm through its Light sleep detection.. Just a chef's kiss ..
it worked very very 100% perfectly. hats off to developers and engineers of this app.
It records your snoring and sleep-talk — and people love it
The night audio recording is its own attraction: people hear themselves snore and talk in their sleep for the first time, get proof of what their family said, and even find a reason to get checked for apnea. For many, that's the whole reason they use it.
i love this app so much, it finally proved that when my sisters said that i was talking in my sleep true!
I've heard myself waffle absolute nonsense at all times of the night thanks to this app.
phenomenal and it helped me find out i have sleep apnea
Sleep data as a motivator and self-tracking tool
For those who don't hit the accuracy problems, the value is the long history and the link between sleep and mood: people see patterns, fix their schedule, run the app for a month or two as a "machine of correction" and come back. Chronic insomniacs call the access to data a godsend.
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.
Insightful as to how my sleep effects my overall moods each day. Still loving this app.
I usually will use Sleep Cycle for a month or two until my sleep cycle has been corrected, and then leave it, but I can see it being a useful tool to use all the time. For me, it serves its purpose well as a machine of correction.
What users hate
Mic-based tracker logs time awake as deep sleep
Because it "listens" for silence rather than reading your body, it misses bathroom trips and hours of lying awake: people get up, walk around with the phone, watch videos — and the graph still draws a flat deep-sleep line and hands out a 90+ score. Trust in every other metric collapses with it.
The app is completely stupid: there are nights when I can't fall asleep, and I know for sure that I'm awake from, say, 1 a.m. to 4 a.m. But the app detects this as "deep sleep"
I even got up to go to the toilet and it told me I had 9hrs uninterupted sleep...
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 free smart wake-up was abruptly paywalled
Long-time users stayed for exactly one free feature — the gentle wake-up during light sleep. Under the cover of "bug fixes and updates" it became premium, and people took it as betrayal: mass uninstalls, switching to "Sleep as Android", accusations of "enshittification".
made smart alarm paid only when it was free for like 10 years
...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.
the only feature that made the app worth using in the first place is now paid. uninstalled
Cancelling the subscription becomes a feedback loop of insanity
The subscription doesn't appear in Google Play, the website sends you back to the Play Store, support stays silent or replies with copy-paste — and you're stuck in a loop with no exit. Cancellation is hidden inside the app, and the "cancelled" yearly charge goes through anyway.
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.
this app is almost impossible to cancel the subscription. i have been trying for 4 years.
Now possible to cancel the subscription through the app - there is no such option. What a shame. Had to use Google support to cancel it.
The trial is a trap — a full year billed with no warning
"7 days free" turns into an instant $35-50 charge for a yearly plan, even though people cancelled in time and waited for the promised reminder. Refunds are refused. Several users name it outright as a dark pattern exploiting the "effort-justification" effect.
rip off. say they will remind you when the trial is over and they then scammed me out of 34.99. do not recommend and do not download.
I canceled my trial, and was still charged for a yearly premium subscription. would not recommend.
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 only listens to the phone, ignoring your watch and biometrics
People have a Galaxy Watch, Amazfit or Garmin on their wrist — with heart rate, motion, SpO2 — yet the app stubbornly scores sleep from the phone mic and loses to the watch's built-in tracker. No Health Connect, only dead Google Fit, so the watch data never gets used.
Doesn't use any biometric data from your watch. 😂 Just "listens" using your phone's mic? Hehe.
I use a Galaxy Watch 7 for sleep measurement, but Sleep Cycle *ONLY* uses phone sensor data despite having a WearOS version.
doesn't really bring anything new beyond what smart watches already track and do. update: it just uses phone microphone lol
A "low battery" alarm wakes you in the middle of the night
A sleep app robbing you of sleep: if the phone isn't charging, it wakes you with a loud alarm at 2-3am over the battery — sometimes even at 60%, or when the phone is already plugged in. People get panic attacks and can't fall back asleep.
my phone had low battery, so I plugged it in. this app KEPT going off about the low battery over and over even though it was plugged in. I finally had to turn it off because it was freaking me out so bad
I wake you up with a vibration 30 min beforehand! so-called sleep experts dont know that the last disturbed 30 mins is nkt a quality sleep!
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.
The alarm sometimes just doesn't go off
The worst possible flaw for an alarm: the app closes overnight, cancels the alarm and only rings when you reopen it — hours late. People miss important events and keep a backup alarm in the system clock, no longer trusting the main one.
More than once the app has failed to alarm, so I really need to give this app up. It will not alarm, and then I'll open the app and the alarm begins (hours after the alarm should have gone off).
Occasionally this app will close itself in the middle of the night, thus canceling your alarm, and when you open the app again it panics and plays the ringer for the alarm immediately upon opening the app.
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.
Audio recording suddenly breaks on a new phone
After a phone swap or update, long-time users find the prized audio recording broken: blank nights, fragments, distorted hissing instead of voices. Support blames the phone mic, even though every other app records fine.
Unfortunately, after using this app for 2 years, it isn't compatible with my new phone. All audio recorded is distorted and broken, if it records anything at all. Support weren't particularly helpful, blaming the phone microphone. Every other sleep tracker app works except this one now
There is no audio available for the last two nights. Update: I've figured that the app only records sounds if I manually erase the recordings from the previous night.
It would randomly not register any sounds and give a blank day.
A forced account and an unskippable intro at launch
To track your own sleep on your own phone, you're forced to create an account and log in — and first sit through a long intro animation with no skip button. On a new phone, old users find themselves suddenly locked out and leave for a competitor.
Used to be so good, but I don't want to sign up for an account to track my own sleep on my own phone. When you first launch the app it also seems to play a longer than needed animation telling you about the app. Theres no way to skip it
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?!?
Yearly billing only — no monthly, no one-time buy
People willing to pay hit a single option — a yearly subscription with no monthly plan and no one-time purchase. The price is shown "per month" but charged for a full year up front. Many say plainly: give me monthly or lifetime and I'd buy.
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.
Good app. However, their premium plan is billed annually. The pricing is displayed as a monthly rate, but the payment is automatically charged for a full year.
is there any option to buy it for lifetime not subscription based but one time payment?
You can't edit or delete a botched night
Forget to hit "stop" and you get a 23-hour "sleep" that wrecks every average, with no way to fix it — only delete the whole thing. The app allows just one sleep session per day, so an afternoon nap erases the night.
Absolutely desperately needs a way to edit the sleep session if you forget to hit "stop" when you wake up. A night where you "slept" for ~23 hours ruins all the stats, and only option is to delete entirely.
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.
There is no way to edit your sleep if the record is inaccurate
Constant premium nag pop-ups get in the way
Premium ads are everywhere: they pop up when you try to play your own recorded sounds, turn the nightly alarm notification into an ad, and chase you around the interface until you want to delete it. The app essentially works as a storefront for the paid plan.
no way to turn off the notification ads for premium. i did not sign up for my alarm clock to buzz me with ads.
But holy heck it is NAGGY. Constantly clicking away from the nag pop-up as I am exploring the interface.
i just wanted to see all of my sounds at sleep it doesn't let me to, instead just shove a premium ad to the screen