Respiratory Health PowerPlug explained

How the Respiratory Health PowerPlug works

The Respiratory Health PowerPlug detects snoring and coughing from sound, using your phone's microphone while you sleep. Its sound detection is powered by Sleep Cycle technology.

For each snore or cough, the PowerPlug logs when it happened and how long it lasted.

The PowerPlug also adds up how long you snored and coughed, and works out the share of your sleep you spent snoring.

Each event is lined up with what your Ring recorded at the same moment: your heart rate, heart rate variability and movement. You can then see whether a bout of snoring came with a rise in heart rate or a broken stretch of sleep.

How to use the Respiratory Health PowerPlug in the app

Once the Respiratory Health PowerPlug is active in the Ultrahuman app, give it access to your phone's microphone and keep your phone in the bedroom while you sleep.

Each morning, the app shows a report of the night: when you snored or coughed, for how long, and the share of your sleep you spent snoring. Over weeks, it shows whether your snoring is rising or falling.

Read each morning's report alongside your Sleep Index for the same night, which shows how that night's sleep went overall. Your respiratory rate is a separate overnight reading from the Ring.

What the research says

Snoring is common. In a telephone survey of 4,972 people in the UK, 40% said they snored regularly. Our blog covers what causes snoring in more detail.

A 2015 German guideline described snoring in adults as soft tissue in the upper airway vibrating as you breathe, a vibration set off when the muscles that hold the airway open relax in sleep. A 2019 update of this guideline says it's still unclear whether snoring without sleep apnea harms health. It advises a sleep study when sleep apnea or another breathing problem is suspected, when someone has heart or circulation problems, or when they want treatment.

Loud snoring can also be a sign of sleep apnea. A 2009 guideline from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine lists the signs a doctor asks about: snoring, pauses in breathing that someone else has seen, gasping or choking at night, and daytime sleepiness that nothing else explains.

The Academy's 2017 guideline on testing recommends a sleep study to diagnose sleep apnea, either in a lab or, for otherwise healthy adults likely to have moderate to severe sleep apnea, at home. It advises against diagnosing sleep apnea from questionnaires or prediction tools alone.

What Ultrahuman's data shows

Across 955 members analyzed who used the Respiratory Health PowerPlug, 43.5% spent under 1% of a typical night snoring, and another 22.6% snored for 5% or more.

Every member in this analysis had used the PowerPlug on at least 14 nights from July to September 2026. The chart groups members into four bands we chose ourselves, not bands from a clinical scale.

The fact that these members chose to track their snoring and coughing could mean they may snore more than members in general. So these data don't show how common snoring is in the wider population.

How to read your snoring and cough data

Compare your nights with your own pattern rather than with other members, and look across weeks, since one night says little on its own.

Over seven hours of sleep, 1% of sleep is about four minutes of snoring, and 5% is about 21 minutes.

On nights you snore more, think back to the position you slept in. In a study of 72 people who snored habitually, most of those without sleep apnea snored less, and less loudly, on their side than on their back. In people with sleep apnea the effect varied, and those with more severe apnea tended to snore more on their side.

A cough that keeps showing up in your nightly reports is worth watching too. European Respiratory Society guidelines on chronic cough note that a cough lasting more than eight weeks in an adult counts as chronic, and a chronic cough is worth having checked. See a doctor sooner if a cough comes with coughing up blood, fever, weight loss or breathlessness.

If loud, regular snoring comes with breathing pauses, gasping or daytime sleepiness, take it to your doctor, and bring your PowerPlug history with you. If sleepiness ever makes it hard to stay alert while driving, see a doctor promptly and don't drive while drowsy.

What the Respiratory Health PowerPlug can't tell you

The Respiratory Health PowerPlug can't diagnose sleep apnea or any other condition. A week with little snoring or coughing in the app can still come with a breathing problem during sleep. Not everyone with sleep apnea snores loudly either.

The PowerPlug works from sound, so it shows when and how much you snored but can't say why. A sleep study measures whether your breathing pauses in sleep.

The PowerPlug also covers only the nights it ran on your phone, so a night it didn't run tells you nothing about whether you snored.