Maybe your partner swears they sleep silently while you lie awake next to a freight train. Maybe you want something more concrete than "you snored all night" before you bring it up. Snore Timeline records the room and turns the night into a timeline you can both scroll through in the morning. This guide walks you through aiming the recording at the snorer, working out who made which sound, and sharing the proof.
What to expect first
Set one expectation before your first night: the app records whatever the microphone hears, and it cannot tell whose body a snore came from. When two people share a bed, both end up on the same recording. Two things let you attribute the sounds anyway:
Closeness. The app captures the loudest, clearest sound from whatever sits nearest the phone. Put the phone near the snorer and their sounds dominate the recording.
Listening back. Playing the audio for an episode is the surest way to confirm who a given snore belongs to. You know your partner's snore when you hear it.
So this comes down to aiming the recording with placement, then using playback to settle any doubt. The app handles the detection; you handle the attribution. For a full walkthrough of starting a session, see Getting Started.
Placement between two sleepers
Placement is the single biggest lever you have. Aim it at the person you want to capture:
Put the phone on their side of the bed, not centered and not on your side. A nightstand or a surface close to their head works well.
Keep it about 1 to 2 feet from their head. Closer means louder and clearer. Sound fades with distance, so a phone tucked near the snorer favors their sounds over yours across the bed.
Plug it in and lay it face-down. An overnight session runs the battery down, and face-down turns off the Always-On Display on iPhones that have one.
Quiet the room. Fans, white noise machines, HVAC, air purifiers, open windows, and a TV left on can mask the breathing patterns the app listens for. When the room sits above 45 dB at baseline, more sounds get labeled Loud Sound instead of snoring.
Tip
If you snore too and want the timeline to favor your partner, lower the detection sensitivity. A lower setting captures only the clearer, louder snoring, which tends to be whoever is closest to the phone. How Detection Works covers the sensitivity tiers and the background noise that masks them.
Whose snore is it?
The app does not separate two sleepers, so it will not tag a snore with a name. You do that part by ear. If your partner snores loudly and sits close to the phone, those sounds show up clearly, but a snore from the far side of the bed can land on the same timeline. When you are not sure, listen.
Open the night and find an episode you want to check.
Play it back. The app starts playback about 2 seconds before the episode begins, so you get a little context before the sound itself.
Decide by ear. A snore from the person next to the phone reads loud and full; a faint, distant one is likely from across the bed.
Audio recorded in a quiet room plays back clearer than the room felt at the time, because the app shapes quiet recordings during playback to make breathing and speech easier to hear. That makes a partner's softer sounds easier to pick out. The audio enhancement section explains when this shaping kicks in. Keep in mind this is sound analysis for personal insight; the app does not diagnose sleep apnea or any condition.
Review the night together
The morning after is where the "you snored all night" conversation gets evidence. Rather than scrub the whole night, jump to the parts that matter:
Open the episode list to see every detected episode. Each one shows its volume in decibels, so you can scan for the loudest stretches at a glance.
Long-press the timeline to jump to the nearest episode, then tap to play it.
Read the loudness. Snore Timeline rates snoring as faint below about 40 dB, light from 40 to 48 dB, audible from 48 to 56 dB, and heavy at 56 dB and up. Reach for the heavy ones to make the point.
Check the per-night totals. The summary counts snoring signals for the night, alongside separate counts for gasps and coughs.
Snores close together group into episodes; a 30-second gap with no snoring starts a new one, so a single noisy stretch reads as one episode instead of dozens of tiny ones. To compare one night against another, tap the date label above the waveform to open the calendar, where nights with recorded snoring carry a dot. Episodes & Events breaks down what each episode card shows.
The episode list sorts a noisy night into reviewable chunks.
Share the clips
A recording carries more weight than a description. When you want to send a snippet, the audio is right there in the episode:
In the episode list, tap the download icon next to an episode to save its audio clip. Each clip includes about 2 seconds of padding before and after for context.
Once the clip shows the share icon, tap it to open the iOS Share Sheet and send it by Messages, email, or AirDrop.
That clip makes a light-hearted "exhibit A" for your partner, or useful context if either of you raises the snoring with a doctor. For a fuller picture across several nights, you can export a date range of data as CSV files in a ZIP. The Export & Sharing page covers both the per-episode clips and the full export. Everything stays on the device until you choose to share it, as the Privacy Policy spells out.
Tip
If your partner gasps or goes quiet for long stretches between snores, those moments are worth a real conversation rather than a joke. Snore Timeline flags breathing disruptions from sound alone and never diagnoses anything; treat them as a reason to talk to a healthcare provider. See Breathing Disruptions.
