You might not need a second-gen Nest Hub after all
Digital Wellbeing is one of the most important features Google has added in recent years. It was introduced with Android 9 Pie and it became an essential tool for anyone wanting to cut down on unhealthy smartphone usage. It’s something that is increasingly becoming a problem with TikTok and Instagram doomscrolling, so it’s good that the tools for that exist. But the feature now wants to expand into tracking your health more closely than just that, though, by adding cough and snore detection while you’re asleep.
Back in May, we reported on evidence that Google was working to add cough and snore detection to Android, but new evidence just unearthed by 9to5Google through an APK teardown of the Digital Wellbeing app. The latest beta shows that Google has begun to work to add “Cough & snore detection” to the app as part of “Bedtime mode.” It would use your device’s microphone to listen to the sounds you make while you sleep and check how much you’re snoring or coughing while you’re asleep.
Digital Wellbeing will work in tandem with Google Clock’s existing sleep tracking features for this. The app can already track how much time you’re sleeping, using your phone’s gyroscope and ambient light sensor to see whether your phone is actually staying motionless the whole night.
This is already a feature that’s commonplace on smartwatches. My Galaxy Watch 4, for one, helped me realize I snore a lot — I thought I didn’t for years. But a lot of people don’t have smartwatches. They likely also don’t have the second-gen Nest Hub which has a number of advanced sleep tracking features, too. And frankly, if snoring/coughing can be detected with a mic, why not just have your phone do the grunt work? It might even help detect problems you haven’t noticed if there are any that need attention.
As with any development like this, it only provides a snapshot of what might be coming down the pipeline. But we’re pretty confident that we can look forward to cough and snore tracking becoming a Digital Wellbeing feature soon enough.
