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

Disney+ launches a TikTok-coded vertical feed called Verts

Published

March 13, 2026

Luigi Leonardo

TikTok has changed how we consume media. Everything is now vertical. Even the most established streaming services, often a bastion for traditionally horizontal content, is adopting the different format. Now, Disney+ is getting a vertical feed called Verts.

Like its contemporaries, Verts presents a continuous feed of content but tailored to show the plethora of titles from the Disney+ library. This might include the first scenes of shows or notable highlights. The hope, of course, is to direct users to the longform content.

Directly from the Verts feed, users can easily add the respective title to their watchlist or go straight to the title’s page. In turn, the feed is accessible from the homepage since it has its own tab.

According to Disney, early experiments with the feature have driven engagement to available content. Right now, the feed is mostly for clipping enticing content from shows. However, the platform will experiment further with the format for new ways to tell stories.

Though Verts surely stands for “verticals” in this case, “adverts” might fit better as its full government name. Still, it might be a useful tool if you’re figuring out what to watch for the night.

Currently, Verts is available for Disney+ subscribers in the United States. Disney also has plans to expand the feature to ESPN for sports-related content.

Apps

Google Maps is finally getting a 3D mode

The app will also have a Gemini chatbot baked inside.

Published

March 13, 2026

Luigi Leonardo

Some of today’s navigation apps are living in the future. Instead of a two-dimensional map, these apps render the user’s surroundings in 3D. It’s a nifty upgrade that helps drivers more accurately visualize directions on the fly. Finally, Google Maps is getting a much-needed upgrade and will take navigation to the third dimension.

In a new update rolling out today, the new Immersive Navigation feature will bring your surroundings to life. The 3D view creates a render of the surrounding buildings, overpasses, and terrain around the car. It takes the guesswork out of navigation by showing precisely where to turn and what landmarks to look out for.

In the same vein, you can now use Street View to preview your destination before you arrive. Google Maps will also highlight your destination’s entrance, side of the street, and nearby parking.

Outside of how the map is visualized, Google Maps is also infusing its service with Gemini. The new Ask Maps feature will let you engage with the app in a conversational manner. For example, if you’re in the middle of a long drive, you can now ask Maps where the best place is to stop over and have a coffee break. Ask Maps will provide directions, a potential itinerary, and even helpful links to book a reservation ahead of time.

Now, availability for both of these features is still a bit limited. Immersive View is rolling out today to compatible devices and vehicles in the United States. Further, availability will expand over the coming months.

Meanwhile, Ask Maps is available now in the United States and India for Android and iOS. A desktop version is coming soon.

Apps

Apple Music, TikTok launch Play Full Song, a new music discovery experience

Rolling out worldwide exclusively through Apple Music

Published

March 12, 2026

GadgetMatch

Ever came across a viral 15 or 30-second music snippet on TikTok that instantly became your jam on repeat?

For years, TikTok has been a regular source of songs that have become part of our playlists. And together with Apple Music, listening to the music you discover has just gotten even easier.

That’s through Play Full Song, a new music discovery experience, which launches exclusively though Apple Music.

With the new feature, Apple Music subscribers can now enjoy full-length tracks that they discover on TikTok. That’s without ever leaving that popular streaming app.

Fans who discover a song that they love on their For You or Sound Detail page can simply tap the Play Full Song button to open up an Apple Music player and enjoy the song in its entirety.

From there, subscribers can continue listening to a personalized stream of recommended songs. That means no more need to switch apps and search separately.

The new Play Full Song experience helps music fans move seamlessly from the moment of discovery to deeper listening. It’s also designed to be instant and all within the same environment.

Moreover, users can also save their favorite songs to Your Music and add them directly to their Apple Music playlists.

Built using Apple’s MusicKit, full-length song playback takes place on Apple Music. This way, streams are paid within the Apple Music service, supporting artists and rights holders while giving fans a smooth, uninterrupted experience.

Listening Party also launched

The feature builds on the success of TikTok’s Add to Music App. This was previously launched to help artists and fans convert discovery on TikTok to a playlist save in Apple Music and other streaming services.

To cap the announcement, TikTok and Apple Music are also introducing Listening Party. This new feature is designed to bring artists and fans together around music.

It creates a shared environment where fans can listen to songs from their favorite artists in real time, interact with each her, and engage directly with the artist during the session.