How to Record Snoring on iPhone (Free, No Account, 2026)

At a glance

Option 1: Voice Memos

Every iPhone ships with Voice Memos, in the Utilities folder. It needs no download, and it keeps recording until you tap stop.

1. Open Voice Memos and tap the red record button.
2. Set the phone on the nightstand, close to your head. Apple's guide says to move the microphone closer or farther away to adjust the recording level.
3. Close any app that plays audio. Apple states that Voice Memos stops recording if another app starts playing sound.
4. In the morning, tap stop. The file saves as New Recording, or under your location name if Location Services is on.

What you get is hours of raw audio with nothing on it to tell a snore from a truck passing outside. The waveform shows where the loud parts are, and you drag through it by hand to find them. For one night, that works. For a week of nights, or for a doctor who wants counts, it gets tedious.

Apple does not publish a storage figure per hour for Voice Memos, so we leave that number out. Check the file size in the app after your first night to see what your settings produce.

Option 2: a snore recorder app

A snore recorder listens while it records and labels sounds as they happen. Snore Timeline 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. It costs nothing: no subscription and no in-app purchases. Here is the setup, taken from the Getting Started guide.

1. Install and allow the microphone. iOS asks for microphone permission the first time you tap record. Until you allow it, the record button stays grayed out. You need iOS 17.6 or later and about 500 MB of free space to start a session.
2. Place the phone. Set it face-down on the nightstand, 1 to 2 feet from your head. If you care about snoring alone, 3 to 4 feet works.
3. Plug it in. You can record on battery, but when power runs low iOS may close background apps, and the recording goes with them.
4. Turn on Sleep Focus or Do Not Disturb. A phone call or an alert that plays sound pauses the recording. A Focus keeps them silent. Close music and podcast apps too.
5. Tap record. The microphone button at the top of the screen turns from a green circle into a red stop button. Lock the phone and go to sleep.
6. In the morning, tap stop and open the timeline. The app builds a nightly summary, and the episode list takes you to each stretch of snoring.

Aim for at least four hours. Shorter sessions work, but a full night shows how your snoring shifts from early sleep to early morning. If you read in bed first, the Recording Delay setting holds off recording for up to 180 minutes, in 5-minute steps.

Where the audio goes matters as much as what the app does with it. Snore Timeline has no account and no server, and its App Store label reads "Data Not Collected", as declared on the App Store on 27 September 2026. Three other snoring apps in our 14-app label comparison declare the same. Of those four, Snore Timeline is the one with no purchases of any kind.

Where to put the phone

Distance changes what the microphone hears. Snores are loud and carry across a bedroom. Breathing is quiet and fades fast.

Lay the phone face-down. On iPhones with an Always-On Display, face-down switches the screen off. Keep the microphone uncovered, and use the same spot every night. If you move the phone, your decibel readings move with it.

Quiet the room if you can. Fans, white noise machines, air purifiers and a TV left on can drown out breathing. Once the room's resting level passes 45 dB, more sounds get labeled Loud Sound instead of snoring.

Recording through AirPods

Snore Timeline works with AirPods and other Bluetooth microphones. The Microphone setting decides which mic records. Automatic uses your headphones' mic when they connect. iPhone Microphone keeps the built-in mic in charge, which lets AirPods play music at full quality while you fall asleep. AirPods sit in your ears, so they hear you differently from a phone on the nightstand, and their battery can die before morning. When the input changes, the app shows "Switched to" with the new device name and keeps recording. For the steadiest results, the support pages recommend the built-in mic with the phone face-down 1 to 2 feet away.

Battery and storage

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

Storage depends on the quality tier you choose in Settings. Detection works the same at all three. The tier decides how much detail you hear on playback.

Basic keeps the frequencies where snoring lives and makes the smallest files. Quiet snores can sound muffled on playback. Pick High Fidelity if you want to hear your own breathing or plan to play clips for a doctor.

To keep nights from piling up, turn on the Storage Limit and pick 1, 2, 4 or 8 GB. Past the cap, the app clears your oldest nights first. With Keep History on, it deletes their audio and keeps the episodes and sleep analysis. Episode-Only Storage goes further and trims the silence after each night, keeping the segments with detected events. Storage & Quality covers each setting.

What you will see in the morning

Stop the recording and the app builds a nightly summary: a sleep score, snoring activity, breathing disruptions, sleep talking, and time in Light, Deep, REM and Awake. Below it sits the timeline.

• The timeline. The night appears as a waveform you drag left and right. Colors mark the sound type: dusty rose for snoring, cream for sleep talking, pale purple for breathing disruptions.
• Episodes. Snores close together form one episode, and 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. Scan the episode list for the highest dB value, tap it and play. Long-press anywhere on the waveform to jump to the nearest episode. Audio enhancement helps when a clip sounds faint.
• Sleep talking. Speech, whispers and mumbling get their own label and color, so you can listen to what you said.
• Breathing pause flags. The app flags a breathing disruption after a minute or more of audible breathing, then 10 or more seconds of silence, then a recovery sound at least 15 dB louder than the silence. These flags come from sound alone.

Hearing yourself snore for the first time can come as a surprise. 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 walks through what to check each morning, and our guide to breathing pause detection covers what those flags can and cannot tell you.

Recording a partner

The app records whatever the microphone hears, and it cannot tell whose body a snore came from. If two people share a bed, both land 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 confirm who made it. You know your partner's snore when you hear it.

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

Sharing with a doctor

The Sleep Foundation suggests that people who sleep alone set up a recording device, and notes that apps can analyze the sound for likely snoring. The NHLBI says that 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 "I think I snore" into something a doctor can hear.

In Snore Timeline, tap the download icon above the Snoring Episodes list and pick Export Report. Choose the last 7 days, the last 30 days or all time, then pick 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. Add audio as per-episode clips, the full-night recording, or both. Audio covers the night you are viewing. Files save to the Files app, where you can email or AirDrop them.

For breathing concerns, record several nights at High Fidelity with the phone 1 to 2 feet away. Lead with the pattern: 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

Snore Timeline is one of several iPhone apps that record snoring, and each has its strengths. SnoreLab has 57,000 ratings, and its App Store listing describes a Snore Score and remedy tracking. Pillow carries an Editors' Choice badge and goes deep on Apple Watch sleep analysis. BetterSleep has 391,000 ratings and lists more than 300 sleep sounds and music tracks. Snollo's listing says its acoustic analysis runs on the iPhone and that it reads heart rate and blood oxygen from an Apple Watch.

Numbers in the label column count the data categories under each heading. A category such as Audio Data means the developer declared it collects that type of data; the label alone does not say the audio leaves your phone. The full label comparison shows each label item by item, and Snore Timeline vs SnoreLab puts two of these apps side by side.

Frequently asked questions