As part of Google’s third Pixel Feature Drop, the Clock app is picking up a whole new set of organized “Bedtime” features. But that’s not the only change it’s getting. The latest version of the app also moves the app’s tabbed navigation bar down to the bottom of the screen.
Left: Before. Center: Google Clock v5.3 on the May 2020 update. Right: Google Clock on the June 2020 update.
Apart from the immediately noticeable navigation bar change, the ability to swipe to move between tabs is also gone in this latest release. If you’re on a Pixel running the latest software update, you may also spot the new Bedtime tab at the bottom right. as mentioned in our Feature Drop coverage, it adds a handful of features to better help you manage your sleep on your Android phone. Just tap over to that tab, and the app will walk you through the process to configure things.
It’s a quick setup.
There are a few permissions you’ll need to grant to take advantage of full functionality, including Calendar access and app usage/sensor data, and the option won’t even appear unless you’re running the latest June Pixel updates (we tried, it didn’t appear on the May release). Once you’ve dialed in a sleep schedule and configured your options, like if you want to be woken by a slowly brightening display or fall asleep to specific “sleep sounds,” you’re ready to go.
Bedtime mode has four sections that show information regarding your settings and data visualizations of your habits (once you’ve used it long enough to generate them). Up top is a “Schedule” section which lets you set your wakeup and sleep times, which days they’re valid for, when you’d like to be notified for bedtime, if the phone should flip into Do Not Disturb mode or Grayscale mode while you’re asleep, if a specific Assistant routine should run with your alarm, and whether or not to use the gradually brightening “Sunrise Alarm” setting.
“Recent bedtime activity,” seems self-descriptive. Though we don’t have any data on our own phone yet to show you what it looks like when it’s populated, Google did publish an example GIF that includes some visualizations:
The “Sleep sounds” section gives you a quick shortcut to ostensibly relaxing sounds to play as you drift off to sleep, on a configurable timer. Below that is a list of your upcoming calendar events for the next day.
Of course, it’ll take us a bit longer to feel out how these new tools work in practice before we can judge them, but they’re delivered by the new v6.3 release of the Clock app together with the latest monthly Pixel software update. Google previously told us that these Bedtime features would be exclusive to its Pixel phones for a short period, with general availability coming later this summer.
If you have a supported Pixel device and you’re interested in checking them out, you can pull down the APK for this latest version from APK Mirror if the Play Store update hasn’t hit you yet.
