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Apple Wind Down mode wants you to get to bed on time

Your iPhone and Apple Watch will help you enforce your own bedtime with modes to help you get ready for sleep.

Andrew Gebhart Former senior producer
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Sarah Tew/CNET

At Apple's  annual Worldwide Developers Conference Monday, the company showed off a new Wind Down mode. When enabled, you can set a desired bedtime and a wake-up time and your iPhone and Apple Watch will help you stick to your schedule. Your phone screen will go into Do Not Disturb mode automatically in advance of your set bedtime, and you can also customize a few shortcuts to pop up on the screen if you like to meditate or listen to relaxing music while you get ready for bed.

All of the other info normally on your home screen will be removed to make it less busy and distracting. When the set time arrives, your Apple Watch will go in to sleep mode and your phone screen will dim. When it's time to wake up, you can choose from different alarm sounds or just have your Watch give you a haptic buzz so you don't wake up your partner.

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Sarah Tew/CNET

Apple is aiming the Wind Down mode at those who have trouble sticking to a schedule, and rolled out a more robust set of sleep-tracking features along with the mode so you can see how your new routine is working. You can see sleep trends mapped over time on both your iPhone and your Apple Watch. 

While not as active as Wind Down mode, the tracker helps you learn your patterns, which may help you improve them. The new Wind Down feature and improved tracker will be part of Apple's iOS 14