Apps

How to get a good night’s sleep

Five tips that don’t involve melatonin

Published

April 1, 2021

Chay Lazaro

Getting a good night’s sleep is essential to staying healthy. Not only does it allow your body to rest, it’s also the time for your body to perform some essential maintenance on your memory, hormones, immune system, and other critical functions. Sleep also helps the brain’s ability to learn, help the body fight infection, and even lower blood pressure.

If you are looking to improve your sleep habits, it might be counterintuitive to look to your smartphone for help. Keeping electronics away before bed is always a good place to start, but there are a lot of tools and features on the iPhone that can get you to sleep better.

Track your sleep

Built into the Apple Watch and the Health app on the iPhone, using the Sleep app is a good way to start tracking your sleep. Sleep tracking will make sleep a priority alongside exercise and eating healthier.

Tracking your sleep can give you an overview of your sleeping patterns so you can make adjustments where necessary. Going to sleep one hour earlier or later can sometimes make you feel more well-rested.

The Apple Watch uses signals from the accelerometer to determine when you’re awake and when you’re asleep, so you can track how long you’re asleep each night and view your sleep trends over time.

Other sleep tracking apps you can try are Sleep Cycle – Sleep Tracker, Autosleep, Sleeptown, Snorelab.

Create a bedtime routine

Using the Wind Down feature on the Sleep app, you can create a customized bedtime routine. You can create a shortcut that includes etting up a specific scene in the Home app, listening to a soothing soundscape on Apple Music, or using a favorite meditation app before you fall asleep.

You can also set a schedule for time away from your iPhone screen using Downtime. This can help put a stop to doom scrolling your social media feeds past your bed time.

Other apps like Fabulous – Daily Self Care, and Mindvalley: Learn and Evolve can help you build habits, create routines for self care that result in better sleep.

Winding down can also be done by anchoring offline activities to bedtime. Changing into comfy pyjamas, doing your nighttime skincare routine, dimming the lights, diffusing lavender oil, journaling, or reading a few pages of a book can help your body know it’s time for sleep.

READ: How you can use your smartwatch to be healthier

Listen to ambient sounds

It’s not just your body that needs to relax before bed; the mind needs to calm down, too.

Meditation and breathing mindfully can help prepare the mind for sleep. Apps like Headspace, Calm, Relax Melodies: Sleep Sounds, and Breethe: Meditation & Sleep have guided exercises to help you drift off at night.

Sleep-associated content consumption on Apple Music has been up since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Apple Music has a dedicated space entirely devoted to helping people unwind, relax and fall asleep. On the app you can find curated mood and activity playlists, nature sounds and white noise, radio stations and more.

The top playlists on Apple Music for relaxation and sleep include: Sleep Sounds, Piano Chill, Bedtime Beats, In My Room, Today’s Easy Hits, Acoustic Hits, Today’s Chill, Pure Focus, Piano Chill.

READ: 8 mindfulness apps to help you cope in this time of uncertainty

Try LumiHealth

In Singapore, the LumiHealth app is also helping to look after your sleep. Users can earn rewards of up to SG$380 with challenges that remind users to stick to a sleep routine, wind down before bedtime, or meditate for a good night’s sleep.

Apps

Instagram takes on Snapchat yet again with new Instants feature

Posts disappear after they’re viewed once.

Published

May 14, 2026

Luigi Leonardo

The popularity of Snapchat’s competitors is as fleeting as their disappearing messages. However, despite how volatile the market is, Instagram wants to try again with a new feature (and app) called Instants.

Pardon me if you’ve heard this premise before. Instants is a feature that lets users share disappearing photos. However, unlike the 24 hours allotted for Stories, Instants will disappear right after a friend views them, but they can still react and reply to them.

The idea of Instants is to trim the excess fat from what Instagram is these days. Instagram’s Adam Mosseri admits as much when he said users want as easier way to shoot content.

As such, users won’t have access to Instagram’s editing tools. They also can’t upload pre-shot content from their camera roll. Like its contemporaries like BeReal, the new Instants feature is about living in the moment and sharing exactly what users see.

Despite disappearing after a single view, Instants will be automatically archived, so they can be reuploaded as normal Stories later on.

It isn’t the Wild West, though. Even if it pares down all the extra features, Instants will still use the safety features available to all of Instagram. Users, especially young ones, can mute and block others’ Instants. Likewise, parents will have control over when and how their young children interact with the feature.

Apps

Google, on Android adopting Liquid Glass: “Not happening!”

Just in case you were wondering.

Published

May 7, 2026

Luigi Leonardo

Google is slightly moving away from Material Design. Last week, a set of icon changes saw Android adding splashes of gradients to its formerly flat app icons. To poke fun at Android’s move away from flat designs, a user on X created a mockup of Android running Apple’s Liquid Design. Google, however, had a response ready in the chamber.

On X, @Micetor made a mockup of Android, specifically on the upcoming Pixel 11, using Apple’s latest Liquid Design aesthetics. It looked much like what an iPhone does except with Google’s icons and fonts.

Clearly, Google does not need to reply to any unsubstantiated mockups about its ecosystem. But they still did.

Sameer Samat, Google’s head for the Android ecosystem, personally replied to the mockup with a simple rebuttal: “Not happening!”

Not happening! Y'all are wild. 😂

— Sameer Samat (@ssamat) May 5, 2026

Despite using the design language for over a decade, Google does not want to drop Material Design altogether. Though the new gradients have revitalized the design language somewhat, the essence of flat design is still there.

Apple, on the other hand, wants a return to 3D. Liquid Design mimics the transparent aesthetics of Windows Vista. Though a bunch of users have found the design polarizing, other brands have started copying the design for themselves, incorporating elements on Liquid Design on their interfaces.

Whatever Google is doing, it’s coming in due time. The company is hosting its annual Google I/O on May 12 to showcase new developments coming to the Android ecosystem, including its design.

Apps

iOS 26.5 will support end-to-end encryption RCS messaging

The final update should come out within the month.

Published

May 5, 2026

Luigi Leonardo

Back in 2023, Apple finally adopted the RCS messaging standard, ensuring that iOS and Android users could communicate more seamlessly despite being on different platforms. This year, the platform is adding an improvement to the feature: end-to-end encryption.

Starting with the upcoming launch of iOS 26.5, Apple will now support end-to-end encrypted RCS messaging between iOS and Android users (via 9to5Mac). Besides the seamless communication, users on both platforms can start enjoying secure messaging with one another.

Apple has been testing the feature since February. Now, the company is confident enough to release the encryption technology in a new build for iOS 26.5 meant for developers. At this point, it’s just waiting for an actual release.

Why is this a big deal? Encryption adds an extra layer of security for your messages. Plus, end-to-end encryption means that messages is encrypted and decrypted only by the sender and the receiver. Third parties, which includes Apple, cannot intercept and access your information.

With the feature on, both messaging platforms on Android and iOS will show a lock icon to signify that, yes, your messages are encrypted.

Though the current build isn’t meant for end users just yet, it’s expected that iOS 26.5 will launch within the month, if not by next week.

SEE ALSO: Apple iPhone 17e review