This article introduces a new addition to your Oura toolkit: Nap Detection.
What is Nap Detection?
Oura’s Sleep Basics
How Nap Detection Works
Things to Keep in Mind
What is Nap Detection?
Thanks to Nap Detection, you now get credit for all your accumulated sleep throughout the day and night. This not only allows Oura to reflect a more holistic picture of your lifestyle back to you, but caters to the fact that not everyone sleeps the same, and not necessarily only at night. All sleep is sleep—so in virtue of sleep’s immense value in helping you recover from, and prepare for your days, we’ve added Nap Detection to be sure all of it is captured and echoed in your Oura data.
For those who regularly nap, or sleep more during the day due to life circumstances (e.g. shift-work, polyphasic sleep patterns, new parenthood, overcoming illness, etc.), Nap Detection will improve your sleep tracking accuracy, as these additional sleep periods can now be logged and accounted for in your Sleep and Readiness Scores.
Oura’s Sleep Basics
Oura tracks your sleep in a 24-hour window from 6 p.m. to 6 p.m. each day, otherwise known as Oura’s Sleep Day. This is different from a traditional calendar day, which runs from midnight to midnight. Oura tracks your sleep this way so you don’t receive a new Sleep or Readiness Score too late into the evening.
- If you nap within the Sleep Day timeframe, your Sleep and Readiness Scores will be updated immediately after confirming a detected nap.
- If your nap begins, or ends anytime after 6pm, your Sleep and Readiness Scores won’t be updated until the following morning—however, you’ll still be able to see all sleep analysis data from your nap (i.e. sleep stages, RHR, HRV, etc). Once your scores update, they’ll also be reflected in your Sleep and Readiness tabs, as well as in your trends graphs.
What constitutes a nap
In order for Oura to detect and surface your sleep as a nap, it must be between 15 minutes and three hours in length, and your body must fall into at least one sleep stage (e.g. light, deep, or REM) during that time. Oura is able to determine which sleep stage your body is in by precisely monitoring changes in your heart rate, movement, and body temperature—meaning, there's a chance your time in bed extends beyond 15 minutes, however your body hasn't yet indicated you've physically entered sleep. In this case, a presumed nap may be instead labeled as a rest and shown on the 24-hour heart rate graph as restorative time (green).
When first settling down to rest, extra movement or an elevated heart rate may also signal you've entered a nap at a later time than initially assumed, based on subjective feeling. Any sleep picked up by Oura that’s longer than three hours will be viewed as your longest sleep period, and added automatically.
Oura places greater emphasis on your longest sleep period while determining any Sleep and Readiness Score updates following the confirmation of a nap. This is because Oura aligns with the general philosophy that humans are diurnal animals—meaning, we tend to be active during the day and sleep at night. Longer sleep also offers a more complete and holistic snapshot into how your body is doing, whereas naps in comparison, only offer a snippet of the same key insight.
How Nap Detection Works
1. After you’ve taken a nap and been asleep for at least 15 minutes, the next time you open your Oura App you’ll be shown a nap confirmation card at the top of your Home tab. This card will include the time your nap was taken, and its length.
2. If you choose to confirm your nap, you’ll receive a new card showing how your extra rest may have boosted your Sleep and Readiness
Scores.
By selecting Show details, you’ll see full sleep analysis of your nap, including your hypnogram (i.e. visual trace), amount of time spent in each stage, as well as your movement, resting heart rate, and heart rate variability graphs.
Your confirmed nap will also be added to your "Activities," shown in both your Home and Activity
tabs.
3. After confirming any naps, you’ll be able to scroll through all your sleep segments and their details from your Sleep and Readiness
tabs.
Things to Keep in Mind
Naps & Your Scores
- Almost all Sleep and Readiness contributors are updated as a result of confirming a nap. The only contributors not updated by naps are Latency (included in your Sleep Score), Recovery Index, Activity, and Activity Balance (included in your Readiness Score).
- Confirming a nap can affect your scores in the following way: your Sleep Score may be impacted (positively or negatively) depending on the quality of rest during your nap. Taking a nap late in the day may also negatively affect your Sleep Score, as late naps can interfere with the quality of your night's sleep. Your Readiness Score may also be lowered if your body temperature significantly elevates while you nap, as this can be a sign of emerging illness.
- If you don’t confirm a detected nap, it’ll automatically be categorized as a restful period or restorative time, which don’t affect scores or contributors in any way, so leaving a nap unconfirmed will have no impact on your Oura data.
- Nap Detection data is currently not available via Oura on the Web, though our team is actively working on making this possible.
How to Nap?
- If you decide to incorporate naps into your daily routine, we recommend you nap in a way that doesn’t disrupt your regular sleep cycle—whatever that may look like for you. This is because maintaining consistent sleep patterns is key in helping you achieve strong sleep quality and quantity.
A Final, Good to Know
- At the time, naps currently cannot be: (1) manually adjusted, (2) added on your next Sleep Day if left unconfirmed, or (3) deleted once you’ve confirmed them
