How to detect sleep apnea with Apple Watch

Sleep apnea is a chronic condition that affects the ability to breathe overnight. Those affected often have problems with breathing – and can even experience temporary respiratory arrest.

Without adequate air circulation, you may feel tired and groggy throughout the day, even though you’re theoretically getting enough sleep. It can also lead to more serious side effects such as increased risk of cardiovascular disease and more.

Typically, people need to participate in a sleep study to diagnose sleep apnea. These are usually done in a laboratory and there are some tests that can also be done at home.

Still, it is a prohibitive and often costly step that leaves many people unrecognized and at risk. Starting with watchOS 11, newer Apple Watch models make this more accessible.

Home or office sleep studies monitor your breathing rate, heart rate, blood oxygen levels and breathing effort. Even more can be tracked in the lab.

The Apple Watch has a large array of sensors

What’s remarkable is that the Apple Watch, with its complex sensor array, already captures a large portion of this. Users were already using their watches to track sleep, and this builds on that.

Luckily, the new health monitoring feature isn’t just reserved for the latest and greatest Apple Watch models. It also comes to the last generation.

The models Apple Watch Series 9, Apple Watch Series 10 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 are supported

Supported models include:

To the disappointment of some, the original Apple Watch Ultra is ignored. The reason probably lies with the SiP.

The Apple Watch Ultra uses the S8 SiP, which remained largely unchanged from the S7 and even S6 SiPs. With the S9 it finally got an upgrade.

Whether it’s the CPU, the Neural Engine, or the power efficiency, the S8 simply isn’t capable of supporting it adequately.

As long as you have a supported model, the only other requirement is that they are up to date. Your Apple Watch must have watchOS 11 installed and your iPhone must be running iOS 18.

Setting up sleep apnea detection is quick and easy. This is done via your iPhone.

Sleep apnea monitoring setup in the Health app

• Open the Health app on your iPhone
• Go to Browse and search for “breathing disorders.”
• The first time, you’ll see a button at the top that says “Setup.”
• Answer a few qualifying questions and click carry on
• The app gives you a short explanation and you can get started next

Make sure your watch is charged before bed

Once it’s activated, you’re good to go. Just make sure your watch is sufficiently charged and wear it to bed.

Once you spend the first night, your results will appear in the Health app. If it detects elevated levels of respiratory distress, it proactively sends you an alert.

View your sleep apnea results in the Health app

If you want to see the data yourself, you can reopen the Health app and navigate back Breathing disorders.

Each night’s results are displayed on a graph on a scale from not increased to increased. You can view it by night or over time.

To be clear, if a positive detection is triggered, this does not constitute a diagnosis for you. The data can be exported and shared with your doctor for further diagnosis.

Increased breathing disturbances trigger an alarm

You may want to have an additional sleep study done. However, after reviewing your information, doctors may be able to easily diagnose you and begin finding treatment options.

Sleep apnea detection is currently available in the US but will be rolled out to more countries over time. According to Apple, over 150 countries will support this feature.