7 Apps That Can Help You Sleep Better While Traveling

Travel is wonderful, but it doesn't come without problems. Staring at a hotel ceiling, waiting for a sleepy feeling that never arrives, is one. The hum of your room may be off just enough to irritate, or the street noise outside may be different from what you're accustomed to. The family next door may also be jet-lagged and dealing with things in a noisy way, while your body insists it's only 4 p.m. even though it's dark outside and the clock says 4 a.m. Scrolling through your phone to pass the time only serves to flood your sensitive eyes with blue light, and burying your head under the pillow just doesn't work.

You're then left calculating how many hours you'd actually get if you just fell asleep right now before that crucial morning meeting. Then you start reflecting on how you should plan things better next time, which, of course, brings activity back to the brain. Falling asleep is now impossible, and you start telling yourself that tomorrow is going to be a disaster, allowing anxiety to creep in.

But there are apps that can help. Some filter out that sleep-disturbing blue light. Others create soothing sounds to block out the unfamiliar soundtrack of the streets below. There are also apps that help you to plot a good sleep or relax and unwind before you even attempt it. Some even create personalized jet lag plans — and even if they help just a little, better sleep means better travel. We've found seven apps that help tackle sleep issues. Some are free, some are premium, but together, they cover everything from noisy hotels to jet lag. However, please note that this article is not medical advice. You should consult a healthcare professional for any serious sleep-related concerns.

White Noise Lite is one of those apps you might want if you're traveling around the world as a budget backpacker. If you're stuck in a dormitory with loud snoring and late-night revelers for a soundtrack or in a budget hotel where unfamiliar street noise filters through a single-pane window, it offers solutions by masking those disruptive sounds with relaxing white noise. Soothing options like chirping crickets, croaking frogs, or crackling campfires are ideal for noisy hostels and hotels, or even on flights where persistent engine noise and passenger chatter can prevent you from sleeping. The app comes with over 50 preloaded sounds and even lets you mix up to five of them together to create sleep tracks tailored to your preferences. There are also ready-made mixes if you don't want to bother with the setup, with layers of rain and thunder or wind and chimes that might help you drift off more easily.

The app is available on both iOS and Android, and maintaining high scores of 4.8 in both stores from hundreds of thousands of reviews indicates that this is one tool that really does the job. One reviewer on the Play Store mentioned that they had been "using this app for over 10 years" before proclaiming, "It's wonderful and keeps getting easier to use." It's one of the best white-noise apps for iPhone, whose users get the bonus of a control center where they can quickly pause playback without fumbling through menus, and it's completely free. There is the option of an ad-free upgrade for $1, but it doesn't give access to new sounds. However, you can download the companion app White Noise Market to access thousands of user-uploaded recordings for free.

Jet lag can turn a new destination into a groggy mess, but Sleep Cycle might help you bounce back faster. It's a great way to utilize your phone to improve rest, based on tracking your sleep by monitoring your nighttime sounds and waking you up within a set window when you're in a light phase. So, instead of jolting you up with an apocalyptic alarm, it gently coaxes your eyes open when you're naturally closer to consciousness. This makes it much easier to shake off that foggy feeling from crossing time zones. In the morning, Sleep Cycle displays a wealth of detailed sleep data, while the premium version includes journaling, which lets you track what you have eaten, how much you have exercised, etc. You'll then be able to understand how these factors correlate with your sleep quality and whether these airport beers are ruining your shut-eye.

TechRadar mentioned that "the journaling, mood tracking, and sleep statistics are useful and fascinating in equal measure." However, because it works best over time, you should be well into the swing of it before you travel, so the app can learn your patterns.  The app is available for both iOS and Android, and is rated highly on both stores, with the free version offering features like the smart alarm and sleep analysis. Premium features include coaching and specific sleep aids that help you to wind down, like soothing sounds, stories, and guided meditations when you're wired from travel and trying to force yourself onto local time. iOS users also get access to general conversations with Luma, an AI sleep coach. For tailored, personalized insights from the AI, you'll need a premium subscription, which will set you back $30 per year.

If jet lag once again has you staring at the ceiling at 3 A.M. or preflight jitters make your palms sweat before you've even reached the gate, Headspace is a renowned app that can help. It's one of the best wellness apps for stress and anxiety, and reducing both means better sleep for travelers. This meditation app has guided sessions specifically designed for travel stress, including the "Inspiring Natural Wonders" meditation that pairs sounds of nature with calming visuals, an ideal listen for when the stress of travel is threatening to make you spiral. There are also body scan meditations that use techniques to help you focus on different parts of your body. These are excellent to help reset your mood during long layovers, while taking part in bedtime sessions helps you unwind in new hotel rooms.

There are more than 500 guided meditations, from quick 3-minute mental resets to longer deep-dive sessions. Plus, there are Sleepcasts, which are atmospheric stories set in dreamy places like a desert campfire or a slow-moving train. Additionally, nighttime SOS tracks help calm your anxious thoughts when awake at ungodly hours in a new time zone, while wind-down meditations and breathing exercises aid in adjusting to a new schedule instead of losing count of your sheep.

Headspace is a paid app. It's $13 per month or $70 for the year, but you can take on a free two-week trial if your trip will only last a fortnight. There are student and family discounts, and it's available for both iOS, with Apple users rating it at 4.8 from almost a million reviews, and Android, where one user mentioned, "Every time I use it, I always fall asleep before it even ends."

If it's a dedicated app to help combat jet lag and get a sounder sleep you seek, consider Timeshifter. It assists with creating plans based on your personal flights and sleep patterns, and it matters not if you prefer to stay up late or are the early-to-bed type. The science comes from NASA-backed research into circadian rhythms and was originally developed to help astronauts reset their body clocks. If you follow the app's advice religiously, you can shift your rhythm up to four times faster than you would if you let jet lag run its course. Travel specialist Scott Campbell of Condé Nast even said, "Timeshifter is the first app that made me realise jet lag is a genuinely solvable problem."

The app instructs you on things like when to expose yourself to bright light, which can be something as simple as watching a movie on your tablet in a darkened airplane cabin, and when to throw on the eye mask and plug in your earbuds to avoid it. It will also make helpful suggestions like when to take a nap and when to say no to that coffee and settle for a calming chamomile tea instead. Some suggestions can be impractical, though, like being told you need to go to sleep at an absurdly early hour. However, the app does include a Practicality Filter that adjusts recommendations around your schedule. There's also a Quick Turnaround feature that's perfect for business travelers who need to be sharp and ready as soon as they touch down, while they can also merge flight plans when destination hopping. Timeshifter is available for iOS and Android, and your first plan is on the house. Thereafter, it's $10 per plan, or you can pay an annual $25 fee for unlimited access.

Scrolling through your Facebook feed before bed wherever you are might feel like a harmless way to unwind, but doing this can actually sabotage your sleep. Blue light from the screen can suppress your body's natural melatonin production, a hormone that regulates your sleep-wake cycles, by making the brain think it's still daytime. Apple users already have Night Shift built into iOS, which automatically changes the screen's color temperature to warmer tones at night when it is turned on. Many newer Android devices also have blue light filters built in, but Twilight offers more control than those.

In fact, it's one of the best wellness apps on Android to help you get better sleep. You can customize the color temperature, filter the intensity, and lower the screen's brightness level, which can be useful when you don't want to disturb your fellow passengers or when you need to check your phone but don't want bright light blasting you awake. It also filters lock screen notifications to prevent that sudden flash when you least expect it. The free app is enough to handle the basics and is devoid of ads, but the separate Twilight Pro Unlock app adds features such as smooth transitions as the light changes and the option to turn the filter off during inactive hours. It has an overall 4.6 rating on the Play Store from thousands of reviews.

Your mind racing when it should be winding down is a common travel problem, and everyone has different ways to deal with it. One way you may not have considered is listening to binaural beats, which are specific frequencies played simultaneously in each ear. According to Atmosphere, when you listen to these slightly different tones, your brain interprets them as a single new frequency that shifts your brain activity focus, with different frequencies linked to different types of focus. While brain activity is measured in a range of frequencies, and binaural beats have shown potential for impacting such frequencies, their effect on focus and relaxation, and indeed their efficiency at all, is far from certain. In short, your mileage may vary.

The Atmosphere: Relaxing Sounds app makes use of binaural beats. It has 15 categories in the Binaural & Isochronic section that address specific needs, including sleep, anxiety, and relaxation. Simply choose the state you want to reach, then optionally layer the beats over your choice of background track, like forest or urban sounds, and drift off to the land of snooze. One iOS user said they "use it to study and sleep mostly," before going on to say, "But at one point I had like eight different saved sounds for different things." The app is free and available for Android and iOS. In-app purchases are available for additional features, and it's rated highly at 4.9 on Google Play and 4.8 on the Apple Store. Headphones are essential, and noise cancellation will help to get the most out of the app, but you don't need to splash out too much on a pair if you don't have one already.

If your travel includes wellness activities, Insight Timer is one of the best apps to help with yoga. But, with thousands of free sleep tracks as well as guided meditations to reduce stress and anxiety, it's also an app that can help you unwind and get better sleep. The app includes specific tracks to help travelers, like "Travel Healthy! Reduce Aeroplane Stress & Jet Lag," which teaches techniques to reset your circadian rhythm. In fact, there are more than 300,000 titles in the Insight Timer library, so you're bound to find something for every situation. Around 100 new tracks are added daily, including bedtime stories to help you drift off, while natural soundscapes and sleep music aim to help you drift off more easily. One Android user also pointed out that "there are a lot of really excellent teachers, many of whom do live classes as well as posting tracks." They can offer things like sleep courses on topics such as overcoming insomnia.

When searching for something suitable, you can filter tracks by length to find a quick 10-minute wind-down session, or you can even opt for an 8-hour sleep track that will play through the night. If you're worried about your battery dying when you conk out, using Sleep Mode automatically locks your phone when the audio finishes. The free version gives you access to a large portion of that massive library, but premium is available for a $60 annual subscription. It unlocks things like offline downloads, advanced playback controls, and access to around 1,000 more additional courses. The app is rated very highly by both Apple and Android users, who each have collectively awarded it an impressive 4.9, with reviews numbering in the hundreds of thousands.

We looked for apps that have high user ratings that can tackle a variety of sleep issues when traveling. We looked to professional reviews to confirm features and performance, and I've also personally tried all these apps.