How to track sleep with Nest Hub and Google Fit

One of the most unique features of Google’s second-generation Nest Hub is Sleep Sensing. Once it’s configured, it can potentially deliver valuable insights into your daily sleep habits, although it’s up to you to fix them. Here’s how to track sleep with a Nest Hub and Google Fit.

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Sleep Sensing uses a combination of radar, light, sound, and temperature data to track the length and quality of your sleep, along with factors that might be impacting it. It can tell if a room is unusually bright, for example, or if you (or someone else) has been snoring or coughing. Note that it’s only designed to track one person, so if you’re sleeping with a partner, they’ll need their own Nest Hub (and a separate Google account) to follow suit.

The Hub’s radar monitors movement and breathing, using that data to calculate sub-totals for Light, Deep, and REM sleep, as well as times when you’re fully awake (including getting out of bed for a few minutes). It even attempts to gauge respiratory rates.

Around your designated wake-up time, your Nest Hub delivers a Sleep Summary showing how long and well you slept. The front page of this summary is kept relatively simple, for instance rating your sleep as “restful” if it was calm or “restless” if you were constantly tossing and turning. With a few swipes, though, you can delve into more granular data, for instance highlighting that 30-minute snoring stretch at 3 AM.

All of this info syncs with the Google Fit app for Android and iOS. That allows you to catch up on a previous night if you can’t spend time in front of your Hub, with the bonus of viewing long-term trends and combining them with data from smartwatches and fitness trackers.

Sleep Sensing is currently free for Nest Hub owners, but starting in 2023, Google is planning to paywall the feature behind Fitbit Premium subscriptions. Already the feature isn’t available in all countries, or even in all languages.

See: Fitbit Premium review

How to setup Sleep Sensing for Nest Hub

Before you begin, you’ll need a 2nd gen Nest Hub by your bedside, and the latest versions of the Google Home and Google Fit apps on your phone. We’ll assume you’ve already got these installed and ready to go.

To set up Sleep Sensing, follow these steps:

1. In the Google Home app, tap and hold on your Nest Hub in the device list.
2. Tap Settings (the gear icon).
3. Select Sleep Sensing, then Set up Sleep Sensing.
4. Follow instructions to enable the feature. You’ll be offered options to track sound events and get personalized sleep suggestions from Google Fit — feel free to skip these, but you’ll be sacrificing key features.
5. When prompted, set a bedtime schedule. This is absolutely essential, because this tells your Nest Hub when sensing should run, and whether or not you’re following your intended schedule. Be realistic unless you’re okay with your Hub constantly rating you too late or too early.
6. Equally as important is calibrating your sleep spot. If you’re not prompted automatically, go to your Nest Hub, swipe up from the bottom edge of the screen, then tap the gear icon.
7. Make sure Motion Sense is toggled on.
8. Tap Sleep Sensing (accompanied by a bed icon), then Calibrate.
9. Position your Nest Hub so that its screen (and hence its radar) is aimed at your chest, and follow onscreen commands.

Once you’ve got your Hub calibrated, it’s best to avoid moving it unless you’re prepared to recalibrate. This can throw off results, especially if it accidentally picks up a partner, pet, or child.

Understanding your Sleep Summary

Whether you’re looking at it on your Nest Hub or in the Google Fit app, the Sleep Summary can be a little confusing at first. It’s really not that hard to decipher, however.

The duration field displays time asleep, overall time in bed, and an “efficiency” percentage, representing the ratio between the two. Ideally, this figure should be between 85 and 95%, at least if you intend to sleep as long as possible.

Schedule tells you how closely you’re following your bedtime and wake-up targets. There’s some leeway here — Google still considers your sleep “on time” if you wake up at 7:38 when your schedule was set for 7:20.

The timings section shows how long it’s taking to fall asleep and get out of bed. Pay attention to this — if it’s taking you 30 minutes or more to fall asleep, you may need to improve your wind-down routine. The Cleveland Clinic suggests that five to 20 minutes is normal.

The disturbances graph displays when you were awake, asleep, or asleep but restless. Paired with this are timelines for snoring, coughing, “other sounds,” and light level changes. This is your main tool for pinpointing causes of bad sleep, or even chronic health issues if there’s a lot of snoring, coughing, or insomnia. Note, though, that your Hub can pick up sounds from other people in the room. Likewise, its motion detection is far from bulletproof, so you may for example have been awake during a “restless” period but not moving in the right way for your status to change.

The sleep stages graph is perhaps the most opaque one initially, since not everyone understands the significance of Light, Deep, or REM sleep. Google explains that Light phases commonly make up over half of your sleep, and are important in memory formation. You need some Deep sleep, however, to help with muscle repair and brain health. REM sleep is often accompanied by dreaming. You might use that last bit of info to figure out if you were woken up by a nightmare.

Respiratory rate is determined by your chest rising and falling. You can usually ignore this, but if you see spikes or crashes during the night, that could be a sign you need to talk to a doctor about issues like sleep apnea.

You may or may not see heart rate listed. This isn’t recorded by your Nest Hub, but rather other fitness devices you might have. As with respiration, keep an eye out for spikes or crashes, and get medical attention if you’re worried.

Speaking of which, we’ll end with a general disclaimer — sleep tracking is notoriously inconsistent on consumer-level hardware, including wrist-worn products, never mind something trying to read you from a couple of feet away. Even Google is protecting itself legally by stating that Sleep Sensing is “not intended to diagnose, cure, mitigate, prevent, or treat any disease or condition.” In other words, while your data can raise concerns, always follow up on it with a doctor to be sure.

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