Tap here for good bedfellows

The smartphone that has already taken up so much of your waking hours is now threatening to invade your sleep - but in a good way.

Designed to help you get a better night's rest, sleep apps can analyse the efficiency of your snooze time, help lull you into shut-eye mode and even control your dreams.

But before you take your phone to bed, first make sure that you have a power source nearby. Most sleep apps need to run through the night and require you to put your phone on or near your bed. So keeping it charged is essential.

Once you are all set and ready for some serious snuggle time with your smartphone, check out these five sleep apps.

Sleep Meister - Sleep Cycle Alarm Lite

Free (iOS)

If you have problems getting restful sleep, this app may be able to help you find out why. Sleep Meister can track your sleeping patterns to see how efficiently you rest.

For this app to work as intended, you first need to set your desired wake-up time range. Then, hit the Start button to begin tracking and put your Apple iPhone screen side down at the corner of your bed.

The easy-to-understand graph The app runs all night, detecting your sleep patterns. In the morning, it finds a suitable light sleep phase within your desired wake-up time range to rouse you.

Once you are up, the app starts crunching the sleep-pattern data it has gathered into an informative graph, showing how well you slept the night before.

Extra information, such as total slumber time and how long you took to fall asleep, are also recorded. The app even rates your sleep efficiency, based on the data gathered.The easy-to-understand graph shows you how much time you have spent awake, or in different stages of light or deep sleep.

The "lite" version, which is free, contains a few unobtrusive ads. To go ad-free, check out the paid version, Sleep Meister - Sleep Cycle Alarm, which goes for $1.28.

White Noise Lite

Free (Android and iOS)

When insomnia gets the better of you, fire up White Noise Lite. It is an ambient sound player, complete with ready-made recordings of relaxing environmental sounds that promise to quickly send you off to dreamland.

Among the 10 recordings available in this app are realistic sounds of a thunderstorm, waves lapping gently on a beach and wind chimes swaying lazily in the breeze.

Relaxing environmental sounds There are also some strange ones, such as the drone of an airplane in mid-flight and the continuous tick-tock of a grandfather clock, which I found more annoying than relaxing.

You can record your own custom sounds.

The brilliant thing about this app is its ability to mix different sound recordings. While you can always play a sound on its own, a mix can produce some pretty amazing effects. Combining the chatter of crickets with the wind chime and beach recordings created a track that sounded very much like my last beach vacation.

The app even comes with several sound-mixing features for further customising soundtracks. You can alter the balance, volume and pitch of each ambient sound in the mix.

For a larger selection of more than 40 recordings, check out the full version of the White Noise app ($2.53 on Android, $2.58 on iOS).

Sleep Time+

Free (Android); $2.58 (iOS)

Want to run Sleep Meister and White Noise Lite simultaneously but have only one smartphone? Download this app instead. It offers sleep-tracking and ambient-sound-player functions. It is a handy two-in-one snooze solution.

As with Sleep Meister, you put the smartphone on the bed to track your sleep patterns. The app is supposed to determine a light sleep phase during which to wake you.

I found the sleep tracker less accurate than the Sleep Meister's one. On one of three mornings, it woke me when the sleep analysis graph indicated that I was in deep sleep.

The ambient sound player, or soundscape function in Sleep Time+, is also more bare bones than in White Noise Lite. While the pre-recorded soundscapes were pretty good, there was no way to create your own mixes.

Try out the lite Sleep Time version for iPhone and iPad before you buy it. This free version includes the sleep-tracking function, but comes with only one soundscape recording and limited access to detailed sleep graphs and charts.

Do I Sleep Talk

$1.28 (iOS)

Accidentally blurting out secrets while you are asleep may make for some awkward mornings.

This app lets you find out easily if you talk in your sleep. Or if you just snore.

Essentially, this is a voice recorder with sleep-specific features. Its no-frills interface is easy to use. Simply set when you would like to start and stop a recording session, hit the Start button and go to bed.

As the app records only when it detects sound, you do not have to wade through hours of playback.

You can adjust its noise sensitivity setting to avoid recording the hum of an air-conditioner or the constant whirring of an electric fan.

The free trial app, Do I Sleep Talk Free, has all the features of the premium version, but records for only two hours instead of 24.

Yumemiru - Control Your Dreams

Free (iOS)

Always wanted a kiss from that person you love but can never have? This quirky app may help you fulfil that dream.

Yumemiru is Japanese for ''to see a dream''. The app detects when you are in REM or deep sleep, and then plays sounds to suggest what you might encounter in la la land.

The "walking in a forest" option Three days of tests produced mixed results. The ''walking in a forest'' option did conjure up a dream about a camping trip, but the ''becoming rich'' dream jolted me wide awake as the sound of ringing jackpot machine bells and jingling coins was quite startling.It comes with eight pre-made dreams - you may encounter a love interest, fly in the sky or become a millionaire. You can also import your own audio clips to customise your dreams.

There is no guarantee that this app will work, but as it is free, there is no harm in giving it a go.

Jasmine Osada is a freelance writer

This article was first published on June 03, 2014.
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