Besides everything else your smart speaker can do—from weather forecasts to fact checks to playing music—it’s also able to help improve your sleep. That might be by playing sounds to help you drift off, for example, or by waking you up gently in the morning.
The sleep-boosting tricks we’re going to cover here can be used across smart speakers made by Amazon, Google, and Apple (as well as the smart displays)—so there should be something here that fits your smart home setup.
Make some noise
Your smart speaker can work as a noise machine if that helps you fall asleep—and you can even choose between several different colors of noise. If static isn’t for you, smart speakers can play a variety of natural sounds as well, so you can drift off to audio of a thunderstorm or the clack-clack of a train on tracks.
Getting this setup is as simple as saying “play white noise,” “play pink noise,” or “play the sounds of a thunderstorm” to your smart speaker, though they all work in slightly different ways in terms of how they respond. An Amazon Echo will try and find a specific app to help, for example, while a Google Nest might load up a track from YouTube—it really depends on what you’ve asked for.
Head into the companion app on your phone—so the Alexa app, the Google Home app, or the Home app for iOS—to see what’s currently playing and to set options such as a sleep timer. Most sounds can be configured to keep playing all night, or to turn themselves off after a specific amount of time has passed.
Evening and morning routines
Another way that smart speakers can improve your sleep health is by giving you nudges to help you stick to a routine. Every smart speaker can set reminders, for instance: Just ask for a reminder to be read out at a certain time, when you know you…
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