How to Record Yourself Snoring on iPhone (and What to Listen For)

Rest · sleepOctober 16, 2026· 5 min read· By the DayDay team

The DayDay coach asleep on his back on a cloud in grey pyjamas, a shiba dog curled up beside him under the moon

Most people who snore don’t know it. As Cleveland Clinic puts it, most of us don’t know how we sound when we sleep, and many people only find out when a partner tells them. If you live alone, nobody will.

There are clues, though. Snoring can leave you waking up with a dry or sore throat, and when it disturbs your sleep it can leave you tired and cranky during the day. The Sleep Foundation also lists morning headaches and congestion as signs worth paying attention to. And if anyone has ever shared a room with you on holiday and mentioned it, believe them.

The most direct way to find out is to record yourself. Here are two ways to do it on an iPhone.

Option 1: record the whole night with Voice Memos

Voice Memos comes with every iPhone, and it works.

Open Voice Memos.
Tap the red Record button and put the phone down.
In the morning, tap to stop. The recording is saved in the app, where you can play it back.

Apple’s guide notes that you can use other apps while it records, but if another app starts playing audio, Voice Memos stops recording. So don’t start a podcast or a sleep sound after you begin.

It’s a good free test, with some real limits:

A whole night is a very long file. You’ll have hours of quiet breathing to get through to find a few minutes of snoring. Scrubbing through it is tedious, and it’s easy to miss things.
It uses battery and storage. An all-night recording is a large file, so plug the phone in and check you have free space.
It can stop partway. An alarm, a call or another app playing sound can end the recording, and you won’t know until the morning.
It records everyone. If you share a room, you’ll hear them too, and you can’t always tell who’s snoring.

Option 2: use a snoring app

A snoring app does the listening for you: it picks out the moments that matter, so you don’t have to listen to eight hours of nothing. If you try one, these are the things worth checking:

Where the sound is analysed. Look for an app that analyses sound on your phone rather than uploading your night to a server, and say so clearly in its privacy policy.
Short clips, not the whole night. Keeping only the moments that matter, such as snoring, talking or a loud noise, is easier to review and kinder to your storage.
A timeline. Being able to see when each clip happened through the night is what turns a pile of recordings into an answer.
Reliable all night. It should keep recording with the screen dark while the phone is plugged in, and warn you if something interrupted it.
Export and share. If you want to play a clip to your partner or your doctor, you should be able to.

Set up the phone for a good recording

Put it on your bedside table, close to your head and out in the open. Not under the pillow or covers, where everything will sound muffled.
Plug it in. A full night of recording drains the battery.
Disconnect Bluetooth earbuds, so the iPhone records with its own microphone.
Turn on Sleep Focus (in Control Center, tap Focus, then Sleep) so notifications don’t light up and buzz the phone all night.

What to listen for

Once you have a few nights recorded, these are the questions that tell you the most:

How often? One or two short bursts a night is different from snoring for long stretches every night.
How loud? Compare nights against each other rather than against anything else. Phones and rooms differ, so a recording only tells you how one night compares with another on the same phone in the same spot.
Is it worse on your back? Back sleepers are more likely to snore than side sleepers. If the snoring comes in long stretches and stops when you turn over, position may be part of it.
Is it worse after a drink? Alcohol is a frequent promoter of snoring: it can relax the muscles in your upper airway. Put a few nights with a drink next to a few without.
Is it you? If you share a bed or a room, listen closely. A recording can’t always tell you who is snoring.

What helps, in short

The usual advice from the NHS and the Sleep Foundation is simple:

sleep on your side rather than your back;
don’t drink too much alcohol, especially in the hours before bed;
treat a blocked nose if you often have one;
lose weight if you’re overweight;
don’t smoke.

Your recordings are a good way to see whether any of these makes a difference for you.

When to talk to a doctor

Snoring on its own is common, but the NHS suggests seeing a GP if lifestyle changes aren’t helping, or your snoring is having a big impact on your or your partner’s life. See a doctor sooner if:

you, or someone who has heard you, notice your breathing stops and starts, or you make gasping or choking noises while you sleep, or you often wake up gasping;
you feel sleepy during the day even after a full night in bed.

Bring your recordings. They can help a doctor hear what you can’t describe.

A note on privacy

A recording picks up everyone in the room, not just you. If you share a bedroom, tell the other person before you start recording, and keep the recordings somewhere only you can get to.

Where Rest comes in

We’re building Rest to do this properly. It records snoring and night sounds on your iPhone, analyses them on the phone, and keeps only short clips, which stay on your phone unless you choose to share one. It lines them up with your Apple Watch sleep stages, minute by minute, so you can see when you snored and what was happening at the time. No watch? Your iPhone still records snoring and night sounds. Rest is coming soon.

If snoring is what’s waking you, our post on why you wake up at 3 a.m. covers the other usual causes.

Sources

This article is general information, not medical advice. Talk to a doctor or qualified health professional before changing your diet, exercise or sleep, especially if you are pregnant, have a medical condition or a history of disordered eating. See our health disclaimer.