Fitbit may soon add snoring and noise detection to its devices, which will likely please snoring spouses and partners and be of interest to people who believe snoring is a sign of a possible health condition.
According to 9to5Google, which decompiled the latest version of the Fitbit app in Google’s Play Store, the feature allows a Fitbit’s microphone (in devices that have one) to listen to “ambient noise including your potential snoring” after you’ve fallen asleep.
Not only would the feature be a significant drain on the device’s battery, but the idea of a sleep tracker monitoring noise “during the night,” as stated in the release notes, is a little creepy.
According to 9to5Google, the feature is called Snore & Noise Detect and it monitors “noise including snores from you or someone next to you.” It analyzes the noise level and attempts to identify “snore-specific” sounds.
When the Fitbit detects a noise event that is louder than the baseline noise level, it attempts to determine whether it is detecting snoring or something else.
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Of course, the snore tracker cannot tell whether the Fitbit wearer or someone else in the bedroom is snoring. The release notes advise users not to play white noise or other ambient sounds in the bedroom, as these can interfere with snore detection, and to charge their Fitbit to at least 40% before going to bed, as “this feature requires more frequent charging.”
The notes do not specify what users should do with the snoring information, but because snoring and the conditions that can cause it can be seriously disruptive to sleeping, it may be a useful metric to be aware of.
According to 9to5 Google, Fitbit will also introduce “sleep animals” as part of a separate upcoming feature, though it appears to be in much earlier stages of development than the snore detector.
It appears that each sleeping style will be associated with an animal—and, once again, it is unclear what users will do with the information or how the animal images will be displayed in the app. However, according to the report, a restless sleeper is a bear, a short sleeper is a hummingbird, a solid sleeper is a tortoise, and so on.
Snore & Noise Detect isn’t yet available to all users, and while 9to5 Google enabled the feature long enough to set it up, it couldn’t fully test it. On Saturday, Fitbit did not respond immediately to a request for comment.