How to Record Snoring on iPhone (Free, No Account)

How to record with a snore recorder app

A snore recorder listens while it records and labels sounds as they happen. Snore Timeline, the app I build, runs a sound classifier on the phone that tags snoring, gasps, coughs, sleep talking and breathing, then lays the night out on a timeline you can scroll and play back. The same audio gives you estimated sleep stages. It costs nothing. No subscription, no in-app purchases. The steps below come from the Getting Started guide.

1. Install and allow the microphone. The first time you tap record, iOS asks for microphone permission. Until you say yes, the record button stays grayed out. You'll need iOS 18 or later, plus about 500 MB of free space, to start a session.
2. Plug it in. Recording on battery is possible. When power runs low, though, iOS may close background apps, and your recording goes with them.
3. Turn on Sleep Focus or Do Not Disturb. A phone call or a system alarm pauses the recording, and a Focus keeps calls quiet. Music and podcasts can keep playing, whether you start them before or after you tap record.
4. Tap record. The microphone button at the top of the screen changes from a green circle to a red stop button. Lock the phone.
5. Place the phone. Face-down on the nightstand, 1 to 2 feet from your head. If snoring's all you care about, 3 to 4 feet works. Then go to sleep.
6. In the morning, tap stop and open the timeline. The app puts together a nightly summary, and the episode list takes you to each stretch of snoring.

Try for at least four hours. Shorter sessions still work, though a full night shows how your snoring changes between the first hours of sleep and the early morning. If you read in bed, use the Recording Delay setting. It holds off recording for up to 180 minutes, in 5-minute steps, counting from the moment you tap Record.

Where the audio ends up matters as much as the detection. Snore Timeline has no account and no server, and its App Store label, as declared, reads Data Not Collected. In my 14-app label comparison, three other snoring apps declare the same thing, and of those four, Snore Timeline's the one with no purchases of any kind.

Where to put the phone

Distance changes what the microphone picks up. Snores are loud enough to carry across a bedroom. Breathing's quiet. It fades fast.

Lay the phone face-down. On iPhones with an Always-On Display, that switches the screen off. Don't cover the microphone, and use the same spot every night. Move the phone and your decibel readings move with it.

Quiet the room if you can. A fan, a white noise machine, an air purifier or a TV left on can drown out breathing, and once the room's resting level passes 45 dB, more sounds get labeled Loud Sound instead of snoring.

Recording through AirPods

Snore Timeline records through AirPods and other Bluetooth mics. The Microphone setting picks which one records. Automatic switches to your headphones' mic when they connect, while iPhone Microphone keeps the built-in mic in charge so your AirPods can play music at full quality as you drift off. If the input changes during the night, the app shows "Switched to" with the new device name and keeps recording.

Earbuds hear you from inside your ears rather than from the nightstand, and their battery can run out before morning. For the steadiest all-night results, the troubleshooting page suggests the built-in mic with the phone face-down 1 to 2 feet away. SnoreLab takes the opposite line. Its FAQ tells you to disconnect headphones and other Bluetooth audio devices before you record [11].

Battery and storage

While it records, Snore Timeline uses about 5 to 7% of the battery per hour. On battery alone, an 8-hour night can take half a charge or more, and iOS may close background apps when power runs low. So plug in. Charging while you record is fine. On iPhones with an Always-On Display, face-down also halves the drain.

Storage depends on the quality tier you pick in Settings. Detection works the same at all three; the tier decides how much detail you'll hear on playback.

Basic keeps the frequencies where snoring lives and makes the smallest files, though quiet snores can sound muffled when you play them back. If you want to hear your own breathing, or you plan to play clips for a doctor, go with High Fidelity.

To stop nights piling up, turn on the Storage Limit and pick 1, 2, 4 or 8 GB. Once you're past the cap, the app clears your oldest nights first, and with Keep History on, it deletes their audio but keeps the episodes and sleep analysis. Episode-Only Storage goes a step further. After each night it trims the silence and keeps only the segments with detected events. Storage & Quality covers each setting.

What you'll see in the morning

Stop the recording and the app builds a nightly summary with a sleep score, snoring activity, breathing disruptions, sleep talking, and your time in Light, Deep, REM and Awake. The timeline sits underneath.

• The timeline. Your night appears as a waveform you drag left and right, colored by sound type, with dusty rose for snoring, cream for sleep talking and pale purple for breathing disruptions.
• Episodes. Snores that come close together form one episode. A 30-second gap starts a new one. Each episode shows its length, snore count, peak and average decibels, and a plain-English summary.
• Playback. Tap anywhere on the waveform to hear that moment, since the whole night is kept. Or look down the episode list for the highest dB value, tap it and hit play. Long-press anywhere on the waveform to jump to the nearest episode. If a clip sounds faint, audio enhancement helps.
• Sleep talking. Speech, whispers and mumbling get their own Sleep Talking label, drawn in cream on the timeline, so you can play back what you said.
• Sleep stages. The app estimates Light, Deep, REM and Awake from your breathing sounds, so there's no watch to wear and no Apple Health to set up. On the nightly summary, the snoring chart switches between loudness and snores per minute, with a band of your sleep stages underneath, so you can see whether your snoring clusters in light, deep or REM sleep. Tap a moment on the hypnogram and the snoring chart marks the same time. If you wear an Apple Watch, Oura, Garmin, Whoop or Ultrahuman, its stages come in through Apple Health too, and each source keeps its own timeline so you can compare them side by side. Sleep Stages explains the estimates and their limits.
• Breathing pause flags. The app flags a breathing disruption when it hears a minute or more of audible breathing, then 10 or more seconds of silence, and then a sound that ends the quiet, like a loud snore, a gasp or a breath. It's working from sound alone.

Hearing yourself snore for the first time is strange. Treat one night as one data point. A cold or a late drink can swing it a long way. After a week, the Weekly Summary compares each metric with the week before. Your First Week lists what to check each morning. For what those flags can and can't tell you, read my guide to breathing pause detection.

Recording a partner

The app records whatever the microphone hears. It can't tell whose body a snore came from, so if two people share a bed, both end up on the same recording. Put the phone on the snorer's side, 1 to 2 feet from their head, and their sounds will dominate. Then play back an episode to check who made it. You'll know your partner's snore when you hear it.

If you snore too, lower the detection sensitivity. The app then keeps the louder, clearer snoring from whoever's nearest the phone. Tracking a Partner covers placement between two sleepers and how to share the clips.

Sharing with a doctor

If you sleep alone, the Sleep Foundation suggests setting up a recording device, and it notes that apps can analyze the sound for likely snoring. According to the NHLBI, if someone tells you that you snore or gasp for air in your sleep, you may want to talk to your healthcare provider. A recording turns a hunch into something a doctor can hear.

In Snore Timeline, tap the download icon above the Snoring Episodes list, pick Export Report, and choose the last 7 days, the last 30 days or all time before picking the data you want. Each category becomes its own CSV file inside one ZIP archive: nightly summaries, sleep stages, detected events, and Apple Watch biometrics if you wear one. You can add audio as per-episode clips, the full-night recording, or both, and it covers the night you're viewing. Everything saves to the Files app. From there you can email or AirDrop it. None of it needs a purchase.

If it's your breathing that worries you, record several nights at High Fidelity with the phone 1 to 2 feet away. When you see the doctor, start with the pattern, meaning your typical disruptions per hour, the longest pauses, and whether the numbers held steady. Preparing Doctor-Ready Data lays out what to bring, and Export & Sharing lists every CSV column.

Other apps that record snoring

Several iPhone apps record snoring, and mine is one of them. SnoreLab's App Store listing describes a Snore Score and remedy testing. Snore Timeline's answer is a 0 to 100 sleep score, with snoring and breathing disruptions counting against it, and remedy tracking across 23 built-in sleep factors plus any you add. Pillow tracks sleep with an Apple Watch or the iPhone and has a smart alarm. Snore Timeline has a Smart Wake Up Alarm too, which wakes you in light sleep within a window you set, and its own Apple Watch app with live heart rate and HRV. Snollo's listing says its acoustic analysis runs on the iPhone and that it reads heart rate and blood oxygen from an Apple Watch. BetterSleep lists more than 300 sleep sounds and music tracks.

For a recording guide, the difference that matters most is how much of the night each app lets you hear again.

The last column lists the data categories each developer declared under each heading. When a label lists a category such as Audio Data, the developer has declared it collects that type of data. The label alone doesn't say the audio leaves your phone. The full label comparison goes through each label item by item.

Export splits the same way. Snore Timeline exports CSV files, episode clips and the full-night recording at no cost. SnoreLab's FAQ calls exporting a Premium feature [11], Pillow's listing puts CSV export among its Premium features [6], and BetterSleep's help center says its recordings can't be downloaded to share [13].

Sleep stages differ too. Snore Timeline estimates them from the audio alone, while SnoreLab's sleep phases come from an Apple Watch through Apple Health [11]. Snore Timeline vs SnoreLab puts those two apps side by side.

Frequently asked questions