Google Sleep API is being carried out publicly accessible for developers, and this will allow sleep tracking apps on Android smartphones use less power to identify sleep patterns, the tech giant said. The Sleep API will be built straight into Google Play Services, and will centralise sleep detection processing. It is one of the Activity Recognition APIs which, “with the user’s permission, can detect user’s actions such as whether a user is biking or walking”.
Google has collaborated with Urbandroid, the developer of the popular alarm app, Sleep As Android, for this. As per a blog post by Google, the Sleep API is an Android Activity Recognition API that surfaces information about the user’s sleep after being granted permission to do so.
It runs on device artificial intelligence model which records input data, like the usage of screen and device movement, from the device’s light and motion sensors.
The data is reported at a regular interval (up to 10 minutes) in the background. The sleep-tracking apps do the same process to transfer information about your sleep, however, the detection algorithms of those apps may be inconsistent.
If a user has multiple apps, they will separately and constantly monitor for changes in user activity leading to more battery usage. Since the Sleep API will come built in the Google Play Services, users won’t be needing additional sleep-tracking apps to run in the background and get their sleep data. With centralised processing, the phone’s battery will not suffer.
For Google Sleep API launch, Google has collaborated with Urbandroid, the developer of the popular alarm app, Sleep As Android. “The new Sleep API gives us a great opportunity to track it automatically in the most battery efficient way conceivable,” the team said. As discussed, the app must be given the Physical Activity Recognition runtime permission from the user to detect sleep, Google said.