Garmin’s Breathing Variations feature is a step toward sleep apnea detection

Garmin has recently launched a Breathing Variations feature during sleep. It shows up as part of your sleep data, and while it’s presented in a pretty straightforward way, I think it hints at something more ambitious the company might be building toward.

I’ve been keeping an eye on Garmin’s push into health tracking, and this fits right into that trend. Recently we got skin temperature and ECG . Now this. None of these are new in the broader wearables space, but Garmin tends to take its time before releasing health features. And I actually think that’s a good thing.

How breathing variations show up

The Breathing Variations chart sits inside your sleep summary. If you’ve got Pulse Ox enabled during sleep, your watch will start logging variations in your breathing patterns. These aren’t oxygen drops exactly, but changes in your breath rate and depth. Garmin gives you a range: minimal, few, occasional, or frequent. That’s it. It doesn’t diagnose anything or give much interpretation.

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You’ll see it overlaid on your sleep stages graph, which makes it easy to spot if those variations line up with restlessness or disrupted sleep. The data’s visible on your watch and in Garmin Connect app and on the web. It looks clean and pretty easy to understand at a glance.

Is this leading to bigger and better things?

I can’t help but think this is Garmin testing the waters for something bigger. Sleep apnea tracking is an obvious next step. Right now, no Garmin watch can detect or alert you to that condition. But breathing irregularities during sleep are one of the core indicators.

And this isn’t a niche issue. According to a recent study published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, approximately 936 million adults aged 30–69 worldwide have mild to severe obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), with 425 million experiencing moderate to severe forms of the condition. In Europe alone, estimates suggest that around 175 million people are affected by OSA . The thing is – most people who have it don’t even know. It often goes undiagnosed because symptoms only show up at night, and unless you’re using medical-grade monitoring or have a partner who notices, it can be easy to miss.

Maybe this feature is a way to start collecting data and refining the Garmin algorithm, without stepping into medical territory just yet. To actually offer sleep apnea alerts, Garmin would need regulatory clearance. That takes time. So this feels like a useful halfway house.

Compatibility and setup

There’s already a long list of watches that support Breathing Variations, and Garmin says more are coming via firmware updates. If you have a compatible device, just make sure Pulse Ox is turned on for sleep. You can find that in your watch’s settings. If it’s set to All-Day Mode, even better.

This feature won’t change the way you use your watch, but it’s adding a new layer of insight. It also signals that Garmin is likely preparing to catch up to companies like Apple, Samsung and Withings, who already offer some form of sleep apnea tracking on their wearables. The building blocks are being put in place.

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