Positioning the iPhone

The ideal location is to place your iPhone on a nightstand or bedside table, on a stable, flat surface near your bed.

Try to have your iPhone within arm's reach (about 30 cm / 1 foot from your head), to let it pick up your snoring sounds clearly. If you sleep on one side of the bed, try to place the iPhone on that side.

Importantly, be consistent with the placement. For reliable data and to track trends in your snoring, try to place your iPhone in the same location each night.

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Place iPhone face up or face down?

The iPhone can be face up, down, sideways or even standing. 

The iPhone has extremely good microphones. One microphone is at the bottom near where you talk, and the other at the front above the screen. We have tested all scenarios extensively and each is fine, but placing the iPhone closer on the bedside table facing up or standing up we have found to be the best.

The most important thing is consistency with placement. If you place face down, continue with placing face down in the same position so that you can compare trends over time.

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Using a charger

It is highly recommended to connect a cable charger, or a use a magnetic charger at your bedside. Refer to the section below on battery use for more information.

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What about my iPhone case?

Cases for iPhones today are generally built very well and allow space for the microphones, so there is no need to remove your case. However, it is best to inspect your case to make sure, as this could impact the recording if covered.

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Where are the iPhone microphones?

Most newer iPhones have 3 microphones (see image below). AutoSnore will use all these microphones to get the best possible audio available.

1. Bottom: The main microphone on your iPhone is located at the bottom, to the right of the charge connector. This microphone is used for regular phone calls and FaceTime calls.

2. Front: Another microphone is hidden at the top of the screen, near the earpiece speaker. This microphone is primarily used for FaceTime video calls, front camera video recording, and when using Siri.

3. Rear: Located on the back of the phone, near the camera lenses, is another microphone. This one is mainly used for noise cancellation during phone calls and video recordings, improving audio quality by reducing background noise.

Starting the recording

You press the "Start" button in AutoSnore when you are about to go to sleep. This will activate the microphone, as shown by a little orange dot at the top of the iPhone. Put the iPhone on a charger and let the screen turn off automatically.

Don't worry if you start this early and you end up reading a book or getting back up out of bed. AutoSnore will be listening for snores and sleep sounds, so it will just continue running in the background until you press "Stop" in the morning.

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Can AutoSnore run in the background?

Yes, once you hit the Start button you can let the iPhone lock itself automatically. Sleep sounds will still record in the background.

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Can I pause the recording during the night?

AutoSnore is designed to assist your sleep, not continuously interrupt it! So for this reason alone we have not included a pause option.

Breaks are an important part of the sleep session, so the best thing is to leave AutoSnore running if you are out of bed for some of the time, such as toilet breaks or checking on the kids. If you did experience long interruptions away from bed, it may also be best to either skip the recording for that night, as consistency of recordings are important for trends. 

Importantly, if you did have a night to forget with lots of unexpected interruptions, you can remove the nights recorded data from within the app.

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What happens if I forget to stop the recording?

AutoSnore cannot stop by itself, so you do need to press the "STOP" button at some stage. 

However, to help those more inclined to forget, AutoSleep allows "Live Activities". This makes it next to impossible to miss, as it shows on your iPhone at all times until stopped.

To turn on Live Activities go into the Settings app on your iPhone - into Face ID & Passcode and turn on the toggle for "Live Activities". AutoSnore will ask for permissions the next time you start the recording, select accept.

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What about calls & notifications?

AutoSnore will not impact any previous settings, so your iPhone will work as normal at night. However, remember if you activate sleep mode on your iPhone or Apple Watch, this may silence calls and notifications.

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Do I need Wi-Fi?

AutoSnore does not require internet or Wi-Fi to record. You can even use in airplane mode.

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Understanding the results

Refer to the 'How It Works' page for an explanation on the AutoSnore results and insights.

How does AutoSnore record my snoring? 

AutoSnore uses your iPhone's built-in microphone to detect and record snoring sounds while you sleep. Simply place your iPhone near your bed (we recommend plugging it in for overnight use) and press "Start" on the app before you drift off. 

Using machine learning algorithms designed to identify and classify different sounds, this will filter out ambient noise and focus on your unique sleep sounds, giving you a clear picture of your night.

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Is AutoSnore accurate?

Yes! AutoSnore can accurately measure the intensity and duration of your snoring. While your iPhone is not a medical device, it provides highly reliable data, such as your personalised recordings and detailed graphs. 

This data can help you track patterns and understand how factors like sleep position or lifestyle changes impact your snoring over time. Many users find this data incredibly useful to share with their healthcare providers.

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Can AutoSnore diagnose sleep apnea? 

Apple Watch gained the ability to detect potential signs of sleep apnea with the release of WatchOS 11. This sleep apnea feature is available on the Series 9, Series 10, and Ultra 2 models at the time of writing. The sleep apnea metric is available using our AutoSleep app. It uses the Watch's accelerometer to monitor subtle wrist movements indicative of breathing interruptions during sleep.

AutoSnore is a powerful tool for monitoring and understanding your snoring patterns, but if you have concerns about sleep apnea or other sleep disorders, we strongly recommend consulting with a qualified healthcare professional for a proper diagnosis and treatment plan. The AutoSnore data can be a valuable tool to bring to these discussions.

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How does AutoSnore help me find solutions for my snoring?

By tracking your snoring while trying different solutions, you can identify what works best for you and start your journey towards quieter, more restorative sleep. Please refer to the Tags and Insights sections here for more information.

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Is volume using decibels?

Audio levels in digital are measured in dBFS (decibels relative to full scale). This lets AutoSnore use a standardised scale to represent the volume % of the recorded sounds. It is much more useful than simply showing the decibel value.

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Why is it a separate app and not in AutoSleep? 

Three main reasons:

1. It only requires iPhone. No Apple Watch required. This makes it available to more users.

2. Simplicity. AutoSleep already has so many features. AutoSnore is designed to be incredibly simple, fun and easy to use.

3. Privacy. AutoSnore will of course use our 100% privacy guarantee. No sound will leave your iPhone to external servers. Not even to iCloud backup.

My recording did not work overnight

This is usually due to something interrupting the background services on the iPhone. 

In short, because of the way iPhones work with background processing, using your device during the night can cause issues by terminating the recording without you knowing it.

The safest option is to leave the iPhone alone during the sleep session. This is important for not only AutoSnore recording, but general sleep hygiene to avoid distractions at night.

Some of the other common issues include:

• Screen Time turning on automatically which may cancel the recording.

• Disconnect other audio devices like bluetooth headphones before bed, as these may over-ride the audio services running in the background.

• Apps like Facebook can over-ride the audio settings of AutoSnore if opened, ensure you do not use your iPhone during the sleep session.

• Make sure the device is on charge, as low power settings may disable some features.

• Make sure the app has microphone permission. When you start AutoSnore, you see a little orange dot appear at the top of the screen, this indicates that the recording process has started. If you don't see the dot appear, it is not recording and the app does not have microphone permission.

• When you start AutoSnore, ensure the app remains open (do not force close it), just let the iPhone turn off automatically. It is fine to turn on Sleep Focus and Do Not Disturb.

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Sounds marked as snoring, but are not snores

AutoSnore uses Machine Learning models to classify sounds into snoring, it is very accurate. However it may sometimes incorrectly classify a snore. The model will continually improve with updates.

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Can I delete the night's recording?

Yes, you can remove a nights recorded data within the app.

Tap the Insights tab and go into "Review your history". Using the graph tap on the day you wish to remove. Scroll to the bottom of the page and select "Delete this entry". Once you confirm the delete, you cannot recover this data, so use carefully.

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What about my partner snoring too?

AutoSnore will pick up all sounds in the room, it will not distinguish another person's snoring. If you have another snorer in the room, there are a couple key things to do:

1. Phone placement on the side of the bed is important, as it will be targeting the person it is closer to.

2. Ensure the volume threshold is set to an appropriate level. The default threshold % will block out the majority of the other persons snores, but you can alter the threshold by going into the Options tab and 'Configure my AutoSnore'.

The main reasoning for not splitting partner snoring is simple, privacy! Privacy is critical for AutoSnore. To distinguish different people snoring we would need to collect your data (plus your partner), identify it and store on external servers which run models to examine the data. This does not align with our 100% total privacy approach.

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Can I use family sharing? 

Yes! AutoSnore does have family sharing, so if you have family sharing applied, be sure to share the app with your family members for free. You can then both record at night and compare in the morning to see who snores more or less.

Does AutoSnore drain my battery?

Like any app that uses the microphone overnight, there will be some battery consumption. 

We've optimised AutoSnore for efficiency, but we highly recommend keeping your iPhone plugged into its charger overnight while using the app to ensure uninterrupted monitoring and prevent battery drain. 

We even added a clever notification to "plug your phone in" if no charger is detected when you tap start. You can turn this on in the configuration options.

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Should I put my iPhone on a charger?

Yes, while not mandatory, it is highly recommended.

The microphone itself doesn't use a huge amount of power. However, AutoSnore isn't just "listening." It's actively processing that audio in real-time to detect, analyse, and potentially record snoring events into those little sound bites you get to replay in the morning. This constant processing by the iPhone and other components is what consumes battery. 

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How Much Battery Does It Use?

It is safe to say that an iPhone will likely experience a battery drain if not on charger, potentially 15% or more, if left recording all night without being plugged in. 

But it's difficult to give an exact percentage because the iPhone battery usage varies greatly depending on the model, battery health, background apps, Wi-Fi, signal strength and so on. 

For some older models or phones with poorer battery health, it could even lead to the phone dying before morning. Newer iPhones generally have more efficient processors and larger batteries, so they might handle overnight recording better than older models.

Due to all the above, the recommendation is to keep the iPhone plugged in overnight!

How much iPhone storage is needed?

AutoSnore lets you store between 7 to 28 days of audio. 1 days audio is roughly 50MB, about the size of storing 10 photos on your iPhone. This can be set in the Options tab under 'Configure my AutoSnore'.

As a guide, 7 days will use about 350MB, while 28 days will use 1400MB (1.4GB).

We recommend using 28 days, as most phones will easily store this amount of data. Anything beyond the set days will be automatically removed to ensure the volume of storage stays consistent.

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How do I reduce or increase my audio storage? 

This can be set in the Options tab under 'Configure my AutoSnore'.

Important: if you reduce the days storage, it will lose that data on changing. For example, if you change from 28 days to 7 days, it will delete all the sounds bites greater than 7 days in age (apart from those marked as greatest hits). So be careful when reducing the storage days.

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What about my sound bites saved as greatest hits?

If you have flagged specific sound bites as part of your greatest hits, these will always be kept unless you manually delete each one. These sound bites are seperate from the normal days kept as explained above.

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Can I backup my recording history?

No, this is currently not an option, as 100% privacy is critical for the app. The audio will be available on only the device it is originally installed and recorded. AutoSnore is total privacy, we do not send or store your sound data to any external servers, not even iCloud.

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Can I use multiple iPhones?

You may install AutoSnore on seperate devices, but the recordings will not be shared between devices. You can only see the recordings that were taken on the device used at night.

AutoSnore will be free to download and use on another iPhone, provided you use the same Apple ID, as the App Store remembers your purchase history.

Remember that you can also use family sharing to share the app for free with family members.

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What happens if I change iPhones?

If you upgrade or replace to a different iPhone, make sure you use the "Transfer Data Directly From Previous Device" option. This will transfer your data to the new iPhone.

If you use the iCloud transfer option this will not keep the data.

Here is the official Apple support link for data transfer to a new iPhone.

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I used iCloud backup to restore my iPhone

If you used iCloud backup while restoring or changing iPhone, you will not be able to access the older files on the device. The data will be deleted.

AutoSnore is total privacy, we do not send or store your sound data to any external servers, not even iCloud.

Should you lose your data in the event of a backup, note that AutoSnore uses the past 28 days, so you can easily start to compile your history again.

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Can I export my sound bites?

You can select individual sound bites to share or save, but there is no bulk export function.

When listening to the sound bite, tap the little 'export' icon and you will see the option "Share this sound bite with someone". This allows you to save, email or message the audio file.

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What happens if I run out of storage?

Your iPhone should warn you when you are about to run out of storage, or if your storage has reached capacity. To check, here is the Apple support link on managing your storage.

AutoSnore will not be able to record any data if you have very limited or no storage. You will need to make room by removing files using the process in the link above.

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Can I use my iCloud storage?

No. AutoSnore is 100% privacy. We do not offer iCloud storage to ensure this privacy. It will only use the on device storage.

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Does my sleep duration go to Apple Health?

We have not added this to keep things nice and simple.

For users wanting to track sleep with an Apple Watch, we suggest using our AutoSleep app or the Apple Sleep app to monitor.

How private are my recordings?

Your privacy is absolutely paramount! As with all our apps used by millions of users worldwide, AutoSnore is designed with complete user privacy. This means we do not collect, store, or access your personal data or your snore recordings. 

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Do you collect my personal data or snore sounds? 

Never! All your recorded sounds and data are held exclusively on your iPhone. The only way your snore sound bites ever leave your device is if you, and only you, choose to actively share them with someone else. You are in total control of your data, ensuring your sleep insights remain completely private to you.

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The Apple Data Privacy Label

As with all apps on the App Store, please pay attention to the Data Privacy Label assigned from Apple.

As seen on the App Store AutoSnore page, we do not collect any data - none! Check if your other apps can say the same.

The best option for contacting us is using the Help tab and 'Problem or Request' in the app, as this sends us more information to assist. Otherwise, refer to our Contact page for extra details.