Support

Everything you need to know about Snore Timeline

Welcome to the Snore Timeline support page. Here you'll find detailed information about how the app works and answers to common questions.

Getting Started

How do I use the app?

Snore Timeline is designed to be simple. Open the app and press the record button to begin tracking your sleep sounds. Place your phone on a nightstand about 1-2 feet away from you, ideally plugged in for charging. The app will record throughout the night and process your audio in real-time.

What does the app detect?

The app uses on-device AI to detect and categorize several types of sleep sounds:

  • Snoring — The primary focus, detected at frequencies mostly between 50Hz-3kHz
  • Gasps — Sudden intake of breath sounds
  • Coughs — Coughing during sleep
  • Sleep talking — Speech, whispers, and babbling sounds
  • Breathing — Regular breathing patterns (used for disruption detection)

Do I need an account?

No. Snore Timeline has no accounts, no logins, and no cloud services. Everything runs locally on your device.

How Detection Works

Real-time AI analysis

Unlike apps that sample audio periodically, Snore Timeline analyzes your audio continuously in real-time using Apple's on-device sound classification. Every sound is processed as it happens—no data is skipped or sampled.

Confidence thresholds

The AI assigns a confidence score to each detected sound. The app uses different thresholds depending on the sound type and whether you're actively using the phone or it's running in the background (when you're actually sleeping). This helps reduce false positives while maintaining accuracy.

Decibel measurement

Sounds are measured in decibels (dB SPL), with the app capable of measuring up to 105 dB. Think of it like a volume meter—the higher the number, the louder the sound. The app tracks both peak and average decibel levels for each episode.

Understanding the Timeline

Interactive timeline visualization

Your entire night is displayed on a scrollable, zoomable timeline. You can navigate through your sleep session to see exactly when sounds occurred.

Time scales

The timeline supports multiple zoom levels:

  • 5-second intervals — Most detailed view, each tick represents 5 seconds
  • 1-minute intervals — Good for reviewing specific periods
  • 10-minute intervals — Overview of sleep patterns
  • 1-hour intervals — Full night at a glance

Tip: Hold down the zoom button to quickly zoom all the way in or out—no need to tap multiple times.

Navigating between nights

Swipe left or right on the Nightly Summary screen to move between different nights. The same gesture works on the Weekly Summary screen to navigate between weeks.

Calendar view

Use the calendar to jump directly to any recorded night. Nights with recordings are highlighted so you can easily find your data.

Episodes & Events

What is a snore signal?

Every time the app detects a snoring sound, it counts as one "snore signal." More signals means more snoring activity during that period.

What is an episode?

An episode is a group of snore signals that happen close together in time. When the app detects snoring, it creates an episode. If no snoring occurs for 30 seconds, that episode ends. The next time snoring is detected, a new episode begins.

Episode details

Each episode shows:

  • Duration — How long the episode lasted
  • Snore count — Total number of snore signals
  • Peak volume — Loudest moment in decibels
  • Average volume — Overall loudness level
  • Event breakdown — Counts of snoring, gasps, coughs, and sleep talking
  • Plain-English summary — A description like "Heavy snoring for over 20 minutes, with a breathing disruption"

Episode descriptions

The app automatically generates descriptions based on the episode characteristics:

  • Volume levels: Faint (<40 dB), Light (40-48 dB), Audible (48-56 dB), Heavy (56+ dB)
  • Rhythm patterns: Rhythmic (consistent intervals), Regular (minor variations), Intermittent (stop-and-start)
  • Trends: Whether snoring grew louder, faded, or stayed stable over time

Breathing Disruptions

What is a breathing disruption?

A breathing disruption is flagged when the app detects a specific pattern: audible breathing followed by extended silence, then a recovery sound. This may indicate pauses in breathing during sleep.

How are they detected?

The detection requires three conditions in sequence:

  1. Baseline breathing — The app must detect audible breathing sounds for at least one minute before the silent period (11 out of 12 five-second windows must have breathing detected)
  2. Extended silence — A period of complete silence lasting 10 seconds or more
  3. Recovery sound — The silence is broken by a snore signal that is at least 15 dB louder than the average volume during the silent period

Timeline markers

Breathing disruptions appear as subtle gray-blue markers on your timeline, making it easy to spot patterns throughout the night.

Important disclaimer

This is audio analysis only—not a medical device. The app cannot diagnose sleep apnea or any other medical condition. It analyzes sound patterns, not blood oxygen levels or brain activity. If you notice frequent breathing disruptions, consider discussing the results with a healthcare professional.

Audio Playback & Export

Listening to recordings

Tap any episode or moment on the timeline to play back that portion of your recording. The app includes audio enhancement to make sleep sounds easier to hear.

Downloading episode audio

Tap the download button on any episode to save that audio clip to your Files app. The app combines all relevant audio segments into a single file for that episode.

Where to find your downloads

Files > On My iPhone > Snore Timeline > Recordings Full night recordings
Files > On My iPhone > Snore Timeline > Snoring Episodes Individual episode audio clips and CSV exports

Exporting data

You can export detailed data for any night as CSV files:

  • Nightly Summary.csv — Overall statistics for the night including total recording time, episode count, peak volume, and more
  • Snoring Episodes.csv — Detailed data for each episode including timestamps, duration, volume metrics, event counts, rhythm analysis, and descriptions

This data can be useful for tracking patterns over time or sharing with healthcare providers.

Storage & Recording Quality

Recording quality options

Choose the quality level that fits your needs:

Basic (Snore-Focused) — ~8 MB/hour

  • Compresses recordings to focus on frequencies below 4,000 Hz
  • Optimized for snoring sounds (50Hz-3kHz)
  • Smallest file size, uses minimal storage
  • Quieter sounds may be less detailed

Standard (Clear Audio) — ~15 MB/hour

  • Captures frequencies up to 8,000 Hz (full speech range)
  • Good balance of quality and storage
  • Better for distinguishing snores from other sounds

High Fidelity (Full Detail) — ~25 MB/hour

  • Records the full audible spectrum up to 24,000 Hz
  • Preserves all audio detail including room acoustics
  • Uses the most storage space

Storage management

The app includes options to manage storage:

  • Storage limit — Set a maximum amount of storage (1-8 GB) for recordings
  • Auto-trim — Automatically delete oldest recordings when the limit is reached

Tips for Better Recordings

Phone placement

Keep your phone about 1-2 feet away from you for best results. Closer means louder detection, but too far away reduces accuracy—especially for capturing breathing sounds, which must be clearly audible to be detected.

Ideal setup: Place your phone on a nightstand near your bed, plugged in for charging.

Battery usage

Snore Timeline is optimized for overnight recording. Most users report 20-30% battery drain over 8 hours. Keeping your phone plugged in ensures uninterrupted recording.

Bluetooth devices

The app supports Bluetooth audio devices including AirPods. However, for best breathing detection, the phone's built-in microphone typically provides more consistent results.

Room environment

For breathing disruption detection to work effectively, your regular breathing needs to be audible to the phone's microphone. If you're a very quiet breather or the phone is too far away, breathing sounds may not be detected consistently enough to establish a baseline.

Troubleshooting

The app didn't record anything

The app only saves audio when it detects sleep-related sounds. If nothing was recorded:

  • Check that Snore Timeline has microphone permission in Settings > Privacy > Microphone
  • Make sure the phone was close enough to detect sounds (1-2 feet)
  • Ensure the phone wasn't muted or in Do Not Disturb mode that might affect recording
  • You may simply have had a quiet night with minimal snoring

No breathing disruptions detected

Breathing disruption detection has strict requirements:

  • Your regular breathing must be audible to the phone for at least one minute before the silent period
  • The phone may be too far away to pick up breathing sounds
  • The silence must last at least 10 seconds
  • A recovery sound (snore, gasp) must follow that's significantly louder than the silence

Detection seems inaccurate

If you're getting too many or too few detections:

  • Try adjusting phone placement—closer for more sensitivity, further for less
  • Background noise (fans, AC, traffic) can affect detection accuracy
  • The app uses different sensitivity when in the background vs. foreground to reduce false positives from daytime sounds

Storage is filling up

  • Delete old recordings you no longer need from within the app
  • Enable storage limits in settings to automatically manage space
  • Switch to a lower recording quality to reduce file sizes

App crashed or closed during recording

The app is designed to continue recording in the background. If it stopped unexpectedly:

  • Make sure Background App Refresh is enabled for Snore Timeline
  • Keep the phone plugged in—iOS may close background apps when battery is low
  • Check that no other apps are competing for audio resources

Privacy & Data

Where is my data stored?

All recordings and data are stored locally on your iPhone. Nothing is uploaded to any server or cloud service.

Does the app collect any information?

No. Snore Timeline does not collect, transmit, or store any personal information. There are no analytics, no tracking, and no accounts.

How do I delete my data?

You can delete recordings from within the app's timeline view. To remove all data completely, uninstall the app from your device.

Can I share my data?

Yes—you control your data. Use the export feature to save recordings and CSV reports, then share them however you choose (email, messaging, cloud storage, etc.).

For complete details, see our Privacy Policy.

Contact Us

If you have a question that isn't answered here, encounter a bug, or have feedback about the app, please reach out. I read every message and will do my best to respond quickly.

Email: meneliktucker@gmail.com

When reporting a bug, please include:

  • Your iPhone model and iOS version
  • What you were doing when the issue occurred
  • Any error messages you saw