Baby tracker night mode: made for 3 am

Why a baby tracker needs a night mode

Many entries are made at night: after a breastfeed, after a bottle, after a nappy change. At that moment the room is dark, your baby has just gone back to sleep, and you usually have only one hand free. A glaring screen, a beep or a loud video ad are the last things you need. That is exactly why a baby tracker needs a night mode.

The baby tracker night mode in Heia is more than a dark colour. It starts with the colours, continues with one-handed use and ends with the question of when and how the app does anything of its own accord.

Warm and dark, automatically

In the evening Heia switches to a warm dark on its own. The setting is called "Automatically dark at night" and is switched on from the start. You choose whether the night begins at 20:00, 21:00 or 22:00. Heia then stays dark until 7:00 in the morning, even if your phone is otherwise set to light.

The dark is deliberately warm and muted, not cold black with bright white text, so the screen dazzles as little as possible in a dimmed nursery. During the day Heia is bright and clear if you want it to be. You can also set the display to dark permanently.

One-handed, half asleep

With a baby in your arms, you use your phone with your thumb. That is why the most important buttons in Heia sit at the bottom centre, within reach of your thumb, and are large enough for tired fingers.

• You start a breastfeed with one tap on the side. Heia shows you which side came last.
• On the sleep timer you end the sleep with "Wake up". If your baby only wakes briefly and goes back to sleep, you tap "Night waking". It is counted, and the sleep keeps running.
• Every entry is saved on your phone straight away, with no waiting and no internet.

If you take turns at night, one person can start the sleep timer and the other can end it, each on their own phone. How that works is explained on the page Baby tracker app for two parents.

Will a baby tracker app wake my baby?

Heia is built not to. It makes no sounds while you log: no beep when saving, no signal tone when a timer starts.

Heia is also restrained with notifications at night. Hints that Heia suggests on its own do not arrive between 20:00 and 7:00, and most of them are silent anyway. At night the app only gets in touch with reminders you have explicitly asked for. The only thing allowed to ring is a reminder you set yourself, for example for a medicine. There are no night-time check-ins and no prompts to log more.

Ads, described honestly

Heia is free for everyday use and is funded partly by advertising. Fixed rules apply:

• Ads are always muted. They never play a sound.
• While you log an entry, at most one small, muted banner appears at the top of the form — never a full-screen ad.
• While a sleep timer is running, Heia shows no ads, and the Sleep World itself always stays ad-free. There are none in Soothe either.
• At night, banners only appear in a small format and not straight after an entry.
• Occasionally, at a natural break, Heia shows a full-screen ad, which is muted too.

With Heia Plus, an optional yearly or monthly subscription, the ads are gone completely. Plus also brings statistics across a month and longer, patterns, the day and night plan, the CSV export and more children. All 16 entry types, night mode and shared tracking for two stay free without Plus.

Calm, not controlling

Columns of numbers and warning colours do not help at night. Heia shows you what you need right now: when your baby last fed, which side came last, how long your baby has been asleep. Everything else can wait until the morning. If you want to look back on the night during the day, you will find it in the reports. And if you would like to read tiredness better, see our guide to tiredness cues. There is more about the app on the home page.

Frequently asked questions