Insomnia Coach

Overall, I’ve benefited from using this app. What I learned was that I was going to bed too early, which is why I was waking in the night for sometimes 1-2 hours of just lying awake, so learning that was helpful, however, despite putting in information about sleeping well with fewer and shorter wake-ups, it kept pushing my bedtime until it was past 11 pm, cutting my sleep down to less than 7 hours, when I kept telling the app I’m feeling good at just under 8 hours or about 7h30m (this is down from attempting to get 9+ a night but waking up in the night). If I go to bed before the prescribed bedtime because I’m tired and I fall asleep quickly, the app chastises me for going to bed too early as it disrupts my sleep drive, but if I’ve fallen asleep in 5 minutes or less, that shows high sleep drive and sleep hygiene will ding you for the short time it takes to fall asleep, too, so I wish it would accept that if I went to bed 15 minutes early and also fell asleep quickly, maybe that’s what I needed. You can edit the bedtime it gives you, but it chastises you for editing that, too. When I’ve gone to bed 15 minutes early and fallen asleep quickly, I would think it would edit my bedtime to earlier, not later and later and later. Despite my frustrations with some of the advice, I have recommended it to friends and patients who are having trouble sleeping as I do think I learned some things.

This app is great for those who work regular days or even swing shifts but it won’t work for those working midnight shifts. Entering sleep times for those individuals results in an error code. This used to not happen but it has been a problem for a few months now.

I sleep at 3pm and wake up at 9pm but it says “error” when trying to input that information; this app doesn’t account for irregular sleep hours which is kind of counter productive and renders the app useless.