How to record your snoring, and actually listen to it

Most people find out they snore from someone else, usually over breakfast and sometimes with an impression. A recording lets you hear it for yourself. This guide covers setting the phone up so the recording is worth playing, listening in five minutes rather than eight hours, and comparing one night with another without fooling yourself.

Why record at all

You are asleep for the whole performance. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s Sleep Education site says many people don’t realize they snore, and that snoring can leave you with a dry mouth or a sore throat in the morning. If that’s all you have to go on, a few nights of audio fills in the rest.

It also helps later. The NHS suggests bringing someone who can describe your snoring to a GP appointment. If you sleep alone, or your partner can’t come, being able to play a moment or two from your phone does part of that job.

Before bed: set the phone up once, the same way every night

• Close to your head, not under it. The nightstand beside you is right. Under the pillow muffles everything, and across the room makes a soft snore sound like nothing.
• Screen down, plugged in. Face down keeps the room dark. The charger matters more: a phone recording for seven or eight hours can run flat, and a battery that dies at 4am gives you half a night.
• Leave the microphone uncovered. Don’t tuck the phone into a drawer, behind a lamp base or under a book.
• Mark the spot. A strip of tape on the nightstand sounds fussy until you try to compare two nights. The same snore at arm’s length and at the far side of the bed are two very different recordings.
• Write down what your room normally sounds like. Fan, fridge through the wall, the radiator, the dog. You will hear all of it in the morning, and it helps to know in advance which noises are furniture.
• Turn on a Sleep Focus so a 2am group chat doesn’t buzz its way onto the recording.
• If you share the room, tell the other person. The phone hears them too, and it’s their bedroom as well. It also can’t tell whose snore it heard, which matters if you both snore.

In the morning: five minutes, not eight hours

Nobody listens to a whole night, and you don’t need to. Start with the loudest moments, or with a ranked list if your app gives you one. Play a handful. If something catches your ear, go to that part of the night and listen either side of it.

What’s worth noticing:

• What it sounds like. Sleep Education notes that snoring can come through the nose, the mouth or both. A fluttery rattle and a loud open-mouthed rasp are different sounds, and a doctor may ask which one you heard.
• When it happens. From the moment you drop off, or mostly in the small hours? Every breath for twenty minutes, or on and off?
• What changes it. Does it stop when you hear the covers shift and you roll over? Sleep Education says sleeping on your back can make snoring more likely, and a recording is a good way to hear whether that’s true for you.
• What isn’t snoring. A fan motor, a motorbike outside, a partner’s snore, the cat jumping off the bed, your own long sigh. If your app lets you, mark these as not snoring so they stop counting.

Listen for these, and act on them

Some sounds mean you should stop recording and book an appointment. If you hear yourself choking or gasping, or the snoring stops, everything goes quiet and then comes back with a snort or a gasp, tell a doctor. MedlinePlus says a partner can tell you if you are snoring loudly or making choking and gasping sounds, and a recording is a second pair of ears. Snora doesn’t look for any of this, and a quiet recording is not proof it didn’t happen.

Comparing nights fairly

• Change nothing about the recording. Same phone, same spot, same charger, fan on or off the same way. If you move the phone, you move the result.
• Don’t judge from one night. A cold, a late glass of wine or a bad night’s sleep can make any single night loud. Sleep Education lists congestion from a cold or allergies, and alcohol relaxing the throat muscles, among the things that can set snoring off.
• Write down what was different the same morning, before you forget: a drink, a blocked nose, slept on your back, the partner was away.
• Compare you with you. A phone microphone doesn’t measure calibrated decibels, and placement and hardware change what it hears. Your nights against your nights is a fair test. Your nights against a friend’s isn’t.

Want to find out whether a nasal strip or sleeping on your side makes a difference? How to test a snoring remedy, one change at a time picks up from here.

Talk to a doctor if…

• someone has heard you choke or gasp in your sleep, or noticed your breathing stop and start;
• you feel sleepy during the day, or wake up unrefreshed or with a headache, even after enough time in bed;
• you’re struggling with attention, concentration or memory;
• you’ve tried the usual changes (side sleeping, less alcohol) and the snoring hasn’t budged;
• the snoring is having a big effect on your life or your partner’s.

These come from the NHS and MedlinePlus pages listed below. Snoring is very common and usually not caused by anything serious, as the NHS puts it, but the list above is the part not to sit on.

Doing this with Snora

Any voice recorder works for this routine; it’s just slower to listen back. Snora is an iPhone app we make for exactly this routine. It records the night on the phone, marks moments that sound like possible snoring and ranks them, and plays back the whole night if you want to hear 3am for yourself. Tap “Not snoring” on a moment and that night is recalculated without it. Recording and analysis happen on the iPhone and the audio is never uploaded. Some snoring gets missed and some room sounds get counted, so your ears still get the final say.

Snora on the App Store

Sources

• NHS: Snoring
• American Academy of Sleep Medicine, Sleep Education: Snoring
• MedlinePlus (US National Library of Medicine): Snoring, adults