Apple Watch to get built-in sleep tracking by 2020, says report

The Apple Watch is tipped to get built-in sleep tracking features with the Cupertino company said to be in the process of testing out the feature before it rolls it out to its smartwatch.

That's according to a report by Bloomberg, which claims sleep-tracking has been tested at secret sites at its various headquarters. Should all the testing go to plan and it works without issues, it will apparently roll out to the Apple Watch by 2020.

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While Apple's fitness tracking features do impress, the lack of native sleep tracking support has been disappointing. There are a whole host of third party Apple Watch sleep tracker apps available, but Apple has yet to offer its own option to track your bed time and serve up those sleep metrics.

After Apple acquired sleep tracker company Beddit in 2017, we anticipated this was a move to finally join the likes of Samsung, Garmin and Fitbit in offering the ability to monitor sleep from the wrist. So far that acquisition has provided us with a new Beddit sleep sensor, but nothing in the way of sleep features for the Apple Watch.

Battery life on the Apple Watch has always felt like a stumbling block for rolling out sleep tracking support and it's likely this is something Apple is looking at with its testing process. Maybe something will need to be done on the power consumption front in watchOS to make this is a feature worth using.

Apple is clearly playing catch up with its rivals in offering native sleep tracking, but here's hoping that when it does land, it'll be well worth the wait.