Talking in your sleep? There’s an app for that

The average person will spend about a third of his or her life asleep. And while researchers continue to look for answers as to just why it is we sleep, a lot of questions still remain unanswered. Why do we dream? What do dreams actually mean? And why do we talk in our sleep?

As with most predicaments these days, there’s an app for it.

It’s called Sleep Talk Recorder and it records everything you say while you snooze. The app initially launched in Sweden in 2010 and has racked up almost 2 million downloads to date. The Sleep Talk Recorder has since trickled its way into the United States and now the folks behind the app are hoping to make a documentary out of the stories that surface from its users.

“I was chatting with a friend about three years ago about a weird dream I had just had,” says Martin Lindau, co-founder of Mad In Sweden, the company behind the app. “We both thought, ‘Well, there must be a way to use your phone to record what you say in your sleep.’”

The app only records sounds — usually in short, five-second integrals — so there’s no blank recording. Once you wake up, you can listen to the snippets you said during the night and share them to the main feed for other users to see.

The main focus of the documentary, Lindau says, is to capture stories where the app has inspired or helped someone. He cites a recent case in New York.

“This man was having sleeping problems. Every night, his dog — a labrador, I think — would lick his face and wake him up. He tried taking it outside, feeding it — nothing,” he said. “He couldn’t figure out why he kept waking him up.”

Lindau says the man tried the app and discovered the next morning that he was the problem. During the night, he made a series of unpleasant, growl-like snores — which is likely what caused his dog to wake him up.

“The dog was just trying to take care of his owner!” Lindau says. “Those are the kind of stories we’re curious to find.”

The documentary is still in its early phases, though Lindau is hoping for a December 2013 completion date. However, he’s still open to hearing from people who have had unique discoveries using the app.