Google has been steadily incorporating health-related features into its Android operating system and Fit applications. Now, current findings from 9to5Google suggests that the Sleep Audio Collection research of Google’s Health Sensing team is testing snore and cough detection tools for Android.
The publication discovered strings disclosing the “Sleep Audio Collection” research that is solely available to Google employees, during the decompilation of the current version of Google Health Studies application. The built-in feature is said to listen for potential sleep disturbances like snoring and coughing using our phone’s microphone. This process will take place natively on your phone to safeguard your privacy.
In addition to these findings, Mishaal Rahman of the esper suggests that the feature may rely on Android 13’s new Ambient Context API, a client API that apps can subscribe to in order to receive notifications of AmbientContext events such as coughing and snoring. Furthermore, because the Digital Wellbeing app is a client of the Ambient Context API, Rahman suggests that cough and snoring events will most likely be presented in the app.
As of now, we can only conclude that Google is working on bringing this detection feature to Android; however, it is unclear whether this will be a native Android 13 feature or exclusive to Pixel devices. We’ll have to wait and see what happens with these snore and cough detection tools in the future.