The sleep features on Apple Watch have always surprised me because I used to have a second generation Samsung watch that would automatically detect sleep. I also liked that my Samsung watch was shaped like a watch.

Add to that, if it knows my sleep schedule and what phase of sleep I'm in, it should be able to adjust the alarm time so it wakes me up when I'm in the best phase of sleep for waking up. So I could tell it I want to wake up between 6:30 and 7:00 and it will wait until I'm not in REM sleep to buzz me to wake up.

Oh, and have it pause my podcast automatically a few minutes after I fall asleep rather than using a sleep timer.

The AutoSleep app will automatically detect when you fall asleep without having to tell the watch you’re asleep, pretty accurate too - whenever I accidentally fall asleep in front of the tv it counts it.

Or just set your watch to sleep focus when you’re preparing to go to bed?

I use it every night like this without a sleep schedule. It will detect when I start sleeping. So even when I’m in sleep focus mode and watching youtube on my phone, it is not going to register this period as sleep.

Autosleep does both these things and has a non-subscription based payment.

Or at least almost, their alarm wakes you when you're in your lightest sleep stage possible during a set period of time and before your set wake-up time.

Example: I have to get up before 6:45 in the morning and I'm fine with waking up within 30 minutes before that, so between 6:15 and 6:45 Autosleep will try to start tapping my wrist gently by vibrations when it figures I'm in my lightest sleep stage during these 30 minutes.

I usually combine this alarm with a normal backup 5 minutes later and also use my ceiling lights as a gradual wake-up light. Most of the time I feel like I've woken up by myself.

I would love to see that too. My guess is that it would drain the battery too much if it constantly was checking if you’re sleeping.

Interesting ideas but I don’t see them manifesting. Apple’s entire sleep tracking philosophy is encouraging regularly nightly sleep habits, not just tracking whenever you randomly nap during the day. That’s why it only tracks during sleep focus and only records if it’s been more than four hours. From Apple’s perspective, you’re meant to be working on a good nightly sleep routine.

I would like intelligent sleep alarms, i.e up to ±X minutes from the nominal alarm time to try to wake you during a lighter sleep phase.