Google unveils ‘Bedtime’ tool on Androids to improve sleep & manage screen time

In an initiative to encourage mental wellbeing amid the coronavirus pandemic, Google is planning to roll out new ‘Bedtime’ feature to improve android users’ sleep. At Google’s 2018 I/O developer conference, the company revealed that it was updating its toolsets in a new suite of “digital well-being” aimed at helping Android users better manage their screen time. The recent update comes as Google said there has been a tremendous rise in the recent searches of keywords such as “insomnia” and “can’t sleep” over the last two months due to the anxiety arising out of the coronavirus outbreak.  

Explaining the digital wellbeing campaign on its official website, the tech giant wrote, “In 2018, we launched a suite of features to help manage your time on YouTube, including setting a reminder to take a break and sent more than 3 billion take a break reminder, today, we're launching bedtime reminders, so you can set times to be prompted to go to bed and better manage your sleep schedule.” Further, it added saying, that the “Bedtime reminders” let the Android and iPhone devices set reminders at specific times to stop watching videos to give a better understanding of one’s daily average watch time.  

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Activate the ‘Sunrise’ alarm

Therefore, with the new Bedtime mode, formerly known as Wind Down in the Digital Wellbeing settings, the Android phone switches to the dark theme and activates the silent mode to make sure the phone does not create a disturbance while individuals slept. One could also turn on the feature automatically when the phone is plugged in to charge, Google revealed on its website. While Bedtime mode is on, it uses Do Not Disturb to silence calls, texts, and other notifications to ensure zero sound and phone distraction. Grayscale fades the colours on the phone’s display to pitch black and white to reduce the draw from enticing colours that keep the users awake, Google said in a statement.  

Further, the company informed, the new bedtime experience would be introduced on the Pixel devices and would be made available in the Clock app on other Android devices by the end of the summers, the company said in the statement released on the website. Meanwhile, Google also recommended that the users activated the ‘Sunrise’ alarm in order to gradually wake up. 

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