Garmin has released a new update for the Forerunner 955 watch series that lets you tailor the way your watch behaves while you're asleep. The new feature is part of firmware update 13.22, which is rolling out to all Forerunner 955 watches worldwide, and should now be installed on the majority of devices.
This new firmware update was a major one, and added a huge collection of features including the ability to measure running power from the wrist without any additional devices (such as a chest strap heart rate monitor or a foot pod), new profiles for disc golf and snowboarding, and a new grade adjusted pace field that shows your running pace taking into account the steepness of the terrain.
However, perhaps the most intriguing addition is a sleep mode update that lets you tailor what your device does at night. As Gadgets & Wearables notes, this isn't a feature listed in the release notes, so it came as a surprise to many watch owners.
What is sleep mode, and what does it do?
Sleep mode, as the name suggests, is the mode that your watch enters once it detects that you've nodded off at night, which starts sleep, HRV and SpO2 tracking (if activated), and disables distracting lights, sounds and vibrations. If you own a Garmin watch, you'll remember that during the setup process you were asked to enter the approximate times you go to sleep and wake up. Sleep mode doesn't activate automatically during this window, but it helps the watch determine when you've actually hit the hay.
Following the 13.22 update, you can now activate sleep mode manually via your Forerunner 955's sleep widget. This is a handy feature, though it's worth remembering that your watch will only monitor one chunk of sleep per 24 hours, so you can't use this as a way to track naps (something we've wanted for a long time).
The update also adds the ability to customize sleep mode settings. Again, you can find these via the sleep app on your watch. Here you can change the brightness of your watch's screen (useful if you find it dazzling after dark or want to be able to see it more easily if you wake at night), choose whether do-not-disturb should be enabled, and decide whether the touchscreen should be disabled.
It's certainly not the most significant change in the 13.22 update, but it's well worth knowing about, and hopefully it'll arrive on other Garmin watches in the near future.
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