10 Hacks Every Oura Ring User Should Know

I’ve been monitoring my sleep and restoration with the Oura ring for nearly five years now, and at the moment I’ll share with you many of my favourite and most-overlooked options—together with one function it is best to flip off, and one function you should use even when your subscription is expired. 

Flip off blood oxygen sensing to save lots of battery

The Oura ring makes use of considerably extra battery with blood oxygen sensing turned on. It might make sense to make use of this function in case you have a particular well being concern, however most of us don’t want it each day. 

You’ll discover Blood Oxygen Sensing beneath the hamburger menu, and might flip it off from there. You’ll lose the “common blood oxygen” and “respiratory regularity” metrics, however you’ll acquire an additional day or so of battery life. 

Sync exercises so that you don’t need to log all of them together with your ring

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it once more: the Oura ring is just not a fantastic exercise tracker. Sporting the ring interferes with weightlifting exercises and it doesn’t have sufficient precision to noticeably monitor different exercises like operating. 

Oura is a superb companion to different exercise apps, although. In case you monitor exercises with one other system and even with a cellphone app like Apple’s Fitness app, you may make certain these exercises get synced correctly so that they present up in your Oura timeline. Go to Settings, after which to Apple Well being (iPhone) or Well being Join (Android). Activate these integrations from there. 

Tag auto-detected exercises (and chortle, if applicable)

Apart from synced exercises, Oura will mechanically detect exercises it thinks you’re doing. You’ll then see a card asking you to label the exercise. Don’t simply ignore these playing cards—Oura learns out of your tags. 

So in the event you went for a stroll, ensure that exercise is tagged as a stroll. However typically it would tag one other exercise as a exercise when it truly wasn’t. I’ve seen hair brushing and yarn winding tagged as varied types of train. Check out the time the exercise was logged, and suppose again to what you had been truly doing on the time. (You possibly can dismiss the exercise if it wasn’t a exercise or isn’t one thing you care to trace.) 

Take into account the charging case

The Oura ring solely must be charged a couple of times per week, however meaning it’s arduous to get right into a routine of charging it frequently. I discovered that the proper stability was charging it whereas I’m on the fitness center; some individuals want to cost whereas they’re within the bathe. 

Brief top-ups each few days are perfect for battery well being. (Every day charging is arguably an excessive amount of; solely charging when the battery is lifeless might be too little.) Oura recommends retaining the battery between 25% and 80% more often than not, in the event you can. 

So determine the place and when is most handy to cost, and maintain a charger there. That’s why the charging case is handy—you may carry it in your fitness center bag, for instance. Sadly it costs an extra $99 to buy the charging case, however no one ever mentioned proudly owning an Oura ring is affordable. 

The Tendencies merchandise within the hamburger menu is one in all Oura’s greatest hidden options. Faucet it and also you’ll be capable of see issues which have modified over the previous a number of weeks. For instance, as I’m penning this, I can see that my resting coronary heart fee has improved over the previous 8 weeks, getting again to my “baseline” after a while by which it was larger than regular.

In case you’ve been diligent about tagging behaviors and way of life components, you may see their results in your readiness, sleep, exercise, or stress. For instance, I’m curious whether or not my temper is best after I take a vitamin D complement within the winter. Temper isn’t one of many objects that Oura tracks, however I can faucet Tendencies after which select from Stress or Sleep and even Exercise (all issues that endure after I’m feeling down) and see whether or not the times I tagged “nutritional vitamins” are inclined to correlate with larger or decrease ranges. 

Log meals with out monitoring energy

Meal monitoring was launched as a companion to glucose monitoring, however you don’t want to trace your glucose to make use of the meals function. Log your meals (you may even snap an image of your plate) and Oura will give you feedback on how healthy the meal is, and maintain monitor of whether or not you’re consuming on an everyday schedule or not. Calorie monitoring is just not concerned. In reality, in the event you’d moderately maintain energy out of your Oura app fully, take a look at the subsequent merchandise. 

Alter your exercise aim

Oura will provide you with an exercise aim every day, normally a sure variety of energy. In case you really feel your objectives are too formidable (or not formidable sufficient), go to the Exercise display screen and choose Edit exercise aim. You possibly can select a distinct aim, and it’s also possible to select whether or not you’d wish to see this aim in energy or in steps. 

If you wish to keep away from seeing energy wherever within the app, there’s a toggle for that. On the identical display screen, choose Calorie decide out. This units your goal to steps and ensures that calorie mentions wherever else within the app will probably be hidden. It’s also possible to entry the calorie decide out from Settings after which Exercise. 

Use Relaxation Mode for journey, menstrual cycles, and extra

Oura has a Relaxation Mode setting that’s meant for once you’re sick or recovering from an damage. (Oura could even immediate you to show it on in case your knowledge signifies you is probably not feeling nicely.) 

However it’s helpful for extra than simply that. Relaxation Mode pauses your objectives, and stops providing you with readiness scores. It’s nice for any time you don’t need the app to trouble you about what try to be doing. I’ve seen Oura customers say they use it for days of their menstrual cycle after they aren’t feeling as much as their ordinary exercise; it’s additionally helpful for journey when you already know you’ll be caught in a automotive or airplane all day, or when your sleep will endure on account of jet lag. 

Use Labs to take part in research (and get a sneak peek at new options)

In case you wish to beta check new options, take a look at the Labs merchandise within the hamburger menu. The choices will change now and again, however usually they’re new options within the making. Proper now, the one providing I see is a blood pressure profile study, by which Oura is accumulating knowledge to hopefully supply blood stress estimates within the app sooner or later. 

Once I signed up for this, I needed to fill out a questionnaire and signal a analysis consent. (Not all Oura Labs objects are research, however they are often.) I can see that Oura thinks I most likely don’t have hypertension (appropriate) and that it’s basing that partly on my good resting coronary heart fee and exercise degree. Different Oura options like meal monitoring and Symptom Radar first made their appearances in Labs. 

Obtain your knowledge from the cloud

That is one in all Oura’s lesser-known options: an internet dashboard the place you may view long-term tendencies, and a “membership hub” the place you may obtain all of your knowledge. This spreadsheet obtain is obtainable even in the event you don’t have an energetic subscription, however you do want a subscription for the pattern viewer and for the entire software program options I discussed above. 

For the online viewer, go to cloud.ouraring.com. Right here, in the event you click on on Tendencies, you may see all your knowledge—5 years’ price, for me. You possibly can even evaluate two variables and see a calculation that reveals in the event that they’re correlated. My sleep rating and complete sleep time are extremely correlated; my HRV and sleep time will not be. 

To obtain CSV spreadsheets of your knowledge (with or and not using a subscription), go to the membership hub and register. Choose Export knowledge after which Request your knowledge. You’ll get a zipper file crammed with spreadsheets you may analyze to your coronary heart’s content material.