How to turn on cough and snore detection on your Pixel 7

Andrew Romero | Oct 31 2022 - 10:26 am PT

Cough and snore detection on Android is relatively new, brought to users with the launch of the Pixel 7 series. With that, you can easily see if you’re having breathing troubles during the night. Here’s how it works.

A feature that detects when you’re coughing or snoring during the night is a relatively simple one. With the Pixel 7, your device can listen in during the night. With that, it can differentiate between regular snoring and a heavier breathing issue, like coughing.

This tool is a part of the Pixel’s Digital Wellbeing feature set. With Android’s Bedtime Mode, you can have your device check for breathing patterns that may be concerning. During the night, your phone will mark timestamps where you were either snoring or coughing. The next day, you can check to see how your breathing was, with a detailed chart of what exactly happened.

How to turn on cough and Snore detection on your Pixel

Currently, only the Pixel 7 series is capable of Google’s new cough and snore detection tool. You can find it in the Bedtime Mode section.

On your Pixel, head into the settings by swiping down twice and tapping the settings cog.
Find and tap Digital Wellbeing & parental controls.
Find and tap Bedtime mode.
- Tip: If you have the bedtime mode quick setting tile, you can long-tap it to get to your Bedtime mode options.
Under your weekly summary, tap Cough & snore info.
Hit Allow access.
Toggle on Cough and snore detection.

Note: You’ll need to create a bedtime schedule for this feature to turn on automatically at night.

Once you have cough and snore detection set up, you don’t need to do anything else. At night, or whenever your bedtime mode is turned on, your phone will record and analyze audio. That audio is stored and processed locally, so Google promises its secure data.

Viewing your cough and snore results

In that same box in the Bedtime Mode section, you’ll see a set of days and vertical bars above them. Throughout the week, your cough and snore detection results will appear as small slits along those bars. Each slit is placed according to what time that event happened, whether it was a coughing fit or a bit of snoring.

Blue lines indicate snoring and red indicates coughing. Purple is a mix of both in the same small time frame. You can also tap any day of the week in that graph for a closer look at your breathing habits. From that page, you’ll also get other details about your bedtime activity.

One thing to note is that since the detection is on your phone, it may end up picking up noise from others in the room with you, including animals. If you have a dog that snores all through the night, your results aren’t likely to be very accurate.

Will the Pixel 6 series get cough and snore detection?

The Pixel 6 has received cough and snore detection in the December 2022 Pixel Feature Drop. With that, the previously inactive feature is accessible in the same way you’d find it on the Pixel 7 series.

In all, cough and snore detection on the Pixel 7 is a fantastic tool. A deep dive into your breathing habits is just another way Digital Wellbeing helps you pinpoint health concerns you may not have been aware of. The feature is easy to turn on and so long as you use Bedtime Mode frequently, works on its own.