Wellbeing October 2026

5 apps for people who can't fall asleep

Not being able to fall asleep is usually decided hours before bed, by the light you got in the morning and the phone you picked up at night. These five work on both ends: a record of how you actually slept, a measure of the daylight you got, sounds and wind-down audio to fill the quiet, and a pause before the scrolling starts.

The apps for people who can't fall asleep are AutoSleep, Sunshine, Dark Noise, Meditation Pal and one sec. I built Sunshine and Meditation Pal; the other 3 are other developers’ apps.

MiaAppLog— an iOS developer who reviews other people’s apps
Published October 2026 · apps and prices last checked 13 October 2026

Four stars is my score for how well an app answers this moment. An app I built gets four and a half — that is a rule, not a comparison. The App Store’s own average is on each card beside it.

1. 

   AutoSleep

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.0 · $8.99 · Health & Fitness · App Store 4.7 (61,749)

   Tracks your sleep from your Apple Watch automatically. No buttons.

   Skip it if you want a reading you can take at face value: accuracy is the recurring complaint, the charts take learning, and the Lights Off feature does not work for everyone.

   Official site ↗More lists with AutoSleep

   
2. 

   Sunshine Editor’s pick

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.5 · Free · Health & Fitness · App Store 5.0 (7)

   Did you get morning light today? It measures your daylight for you.

   App Store ↗More lists with Sunshine

   
3. 

   Dark Noise

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.0 · Free · Health & Fitness · App Store 4.8 (3,682)

   50+ ambient sounds to fall asleep to, with a timer that fades them out.

   Skip it if you want to try before paying: the price appears only once you have installed it, and reviewers report the app losing track of a subscription they already hold.

   Official site ↗More lists with Dark Noise

   
4. 

   Meditation Pal Editor’s pick

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.5 · Free · Productivity · App Store 5.0 (7)

   Your own wind-down audio in one calm player, even with the screen locked.

   App Store ↗More lists with Meditation Pal

   
5. 

   one sec

   ★★★★★★★★★★4.0 · Free · Productivity · App Store 4.8 (23,692)

   Puts one breath between you and a scrolling app before it opens.

   Skip it if you are staying on the free tier: reviewers describe it as deliberately more irritating than the paid one, which is an odd thing to build into an app about calm.

   Official site ↗More lists with one sec

   

Sunshine and Meditation Pal are mine — everything else on this list is someone else’s app. How that works.