How DreamCue works, from pairing your watch to keeping your dreams private.
DreamCue turns your Garmin watch into a lucid-dreaming companion. The DreamCue watch app follows your sleep, estimates when you are in REM sleep, the stage in which vivid dreams happen, and times gentle reality-check cues to it. Over time this trains you to notice that you are dreaming.
On dreamcue.app you see your nights, the cues that fired, your naps and meditations, and your dream journal.
A Garmin watch with the DreamCue app from the Connect IQ™ Store, a phone with the Garmin Connect app, and a DreamCue account. The watch has no internet connection of its own: it sends its data over Bluetooth to the Garmin Connect app, which passes it on to DreamCue.
DreamCue is in beta, and it is free while the beta runs.
The app works, but we are still improving it, most of all the timing of cues: the REM estimate is not yet as accurate as we want.
By using DreamCue during the beta, you help with that. With your consent, we use pseudonymised data to improve the timing of cues, as described in section 3 of the privacy policy.
Install the DreamCue app on your watch from the Connect IQ™ Store and open it. It shows a pairing code. Enter that code on dreamcue.app: right after you sign up, the onboarding asks for it. Later you can pair another watch under Settings → Watch → Manage.
No, it is optional, but your watch only gives REM cues at night when it is connected. DreamCue also imports your Garmin sleep data, which the sleep timeline is built from.
Without it, Night Mode only tracks: no REM cues and no morning dream question. Daytime cues, naps, meditations and the dream journal on dreamcue.app still work. You can connect it at any time under Settings → Garmin Connect.
Yes, you must be 16 or older. Sign-up asks you to confirm this.
A dream in which you realise that you are dreaming. Once you know, you can often stay in the dream and steer it. Lucid dreaming is a skill: most people get better at it with regular practice, such as reality checks.
Vivid dreams happen mostly in REM sleep. The watch app estimates your sleep phases from the watch's sensors, such as heart rate, heart-rate variability and movement, and gives its cues when it thinks you are in REM.
These are estimates. A watch on your wrist cannot measure sleep as precisely as a sleep lab, and during the beta the estimate is not yet as accurate as we want, so cues will often come outside REM. We use the data from the beta to improve it.
Reality checks are short prompts the watch gives during the day to test whether you are dreaming. At night the watch gives a REM cue instead: a gentle vibration when it thinks you are in REM sleep.
Exercises are daytime practice that builds the habit behind the reality checks: if you check reality during the day, you are more likely to do it in a dream too.
On the Cues page, star a cue to switch it on and unstar it to switch it off. You can also switch a whole category off; your stars are kept for when you switch it back on. Changes reach your watch the next time it syncs.
How often your watch showed the cue, how often you acknowledged or dismissed it, and when it last came up. They come from what your watch reported, so they lag behind until the next sync.
Because that is when most REM sleep happens. Sleep runs in cycles of about 90 minutes: the early cycles are mostly deep sleep, the later ones shift toward REM. The last REM phase before you wake up can last 30 to 60 minutes.
Round Garmin watches with an AMOLED screen and Connect IQ 5.2 or newer, such as the Venu 3, Venu 3S and Venu 4, vívoactive 5 and 6, Forerunner 165, 265, 570, 965 and 970, fēnix 8 and fēnix E, epix (Gen 2) and epix Pro, Instinct 3 AMOLED and D2 Mach. The Connect IQ™ Store only offers DreamCue for watches it runs on.
Watches with a memory-in-pixel screen (such as the fēnix 7, Instinct 2 or Forerunner 255 and 955), square watches (Venu Sq 2, Venu X1) and older watches such as the Venu 2 are not supported. Older watches cannot keep an app running through the night.
The app has five pages: the home page (the time, your next cue and naps), Cue (the latest reality check or exercise), Meditate, Last night and Sync. Swipe up or down, or use the up and down buttons, to move between them. Back takes you to the home page, and there it closes the app.
A page with an action shows it in green next to the Start button: Nap on the home page, Start on Meditate, Sync now on Sync. The page dots and button hints show for 2 seconds when you arrive on a page and then slide away.
A cue vibrates and opens the Cue page. Do the check, then tap the screen or press Start: the cue counts as done and the watch goes back to where you were. Swipe away or press Back to skip it. If you do nothing, the page goes away by itself after a minute.
These three outcomes are what the counts on the Cues page show.
Yes. With DreamCue open, a cue comes on time, vibrates with your own Vibration pattern and Day vibration, and opens the Cue page, which shows whether it is a reality check or an exercise. There you mark it done or skip it.
With DreamCue closed, the cue arrives as a notification with the standard vibration of your watch, and can be a few minutes late. It only counts as shown: whether you did it is not recorded, so the counts on the Cues page stay incomplete.
An open DreamCue also starts Night Mode by itself at bedtime. So open it from the app list, not from the glance or a notification, and leave it open.
At bedtime, open DreamCue from the app list on your watch and leave it open. Once your sleep window starts, it switches to Night Mode by itself. Your sleep window is the bedtime and wake time in your Garmin sleep settings.
Going to bed earlier? Open the menu (the menu button, or press and hold the screen on a touch watch) and choose Start Night Mode.
Night Mode only runs while DreamCue is open. With the app closed, nothing tracks your night.
You opened DreamCue from its glance less than half an hour before your bedtime, or during the night. Your watch closes an app opened that way within minutes, so Night Mode would not last the night. Close DreamCue and open it again from the app list.
Tapping a DreamCue notification near bedtime has the same problem, so in the evening always start DreamCue from the app list.
Night Mode ends when you open another app on your watch, such as an activity or a timer. The controls menu does not end it, and neither does the screen turning off.
The Back button never ends the night on its own: it asks End night? first. An app update installed during the night does end it.
In Night Mode the touchscreen does nothing, so rolling onto your watch cannot answer a question or stop the tracking. Use the buttons: the screen shows which button does what.
Your watch follows your night but gives no REM cues and asks no questions. REM cues need a linked Garmin Connect account: link it under Settings → Garmin Connect. Your watch picks this up within an hour while DreamCue is open, or straight away when you press Sync now on its Sync page.
It also happens when Collect only is on in the watch menu. That setting switches off all cues, day and night, while your watch keeps collecting data.
REM cues are rare on purpose: usually one to three a night, at least 90 minutes apart, and none in roughly the first five hours after you fall asleep, when REM phases are still short. After you move, the watch waits 10 minutes, because a raised heart rate after getting up looks like REM. While the yoga timer runs, cues are paused.
So a short or restless night can pass without a cue.
Strong enough to notice in your dream, but not so strong that it wakes you: a cue that wakes you ends the dream instead of making it lucid.
Your naps show where that line is. The nap alarm starts very gently and gets a little stronger every minute, so the strength you get up at is roughly what wakes you. The Naps page shows the alarm strength you usually got up at, and the Night vibration picker on your watch shows the strength your last nap woke you at. Set Night vibration below the lower of the two.
Still woken by a REM cue? Lower it by 5%, one step on the picker. Already at the lowest setting? Try Gentle swell under Vibration pattern: it builds up slowly so it does not startle you.
When your wake time has passed, the watch asks you to recall your dream and then Did you dream? Your answer ends the night. If you do not answer, Night Mode ends by itself 90 minutes after your wake time.
Up earlier? Press Back and confirm End night? The watch then skips the dream question, but you can still add your dream on dreamcue.app.
The recording page reaches your phone through Garmin's Connect IQ™ app, not through Garmin Connect. Make sure the Connect IQ app is installed and running, and look for its notification asking whether to sign in to your DreamCue account. Tapping it opens the page.
Did you switch Bluetooth on your phone off and on again? Then open the Connect IQ app once: it does not reconnect to your watch by itself. Until the page has opened, the Good morning page on your watch says No notification? Open Connect IQ.
If you have not set up your dream journal, nothing opens. Otherwise the watch keeps trying for two hours; after that, add your dream on dreamcue.app.
At random moments, by default every 30 to 60 minutes; you change this under Frequency in the watch menu. There are no cues in your sleep window, in the first 45 to 60 minutes after your wake time, or during a nap.
You can always ignore a cue. How it reaches you depends on whether DreamCue is open: see Does it matter whether DreamCue is open when a cue comes?
In batches, whenever your phone is nearby with Garmin Connect running. During your sleep window the watch keeps its radio quiet, so the data from your night arrives in the morning.
The Sync page on your watch shows what is waiting; press Sync now to send it straight away. When a lot is waiting after the night, the watch reminds you with sync DreamCue now. No connection means your phone is out of reach, Bluetooth is off or Garmin Connect is not running.
They are the two settings of Nap mode in the watch menu. Quiet records your nap as a meditation activity named "Nap": it shows up as an activity in Garmin Connect, and Garmin does not detect it as a nap as well. Track, the default, records nothing and leaves it to Garmin to detect the nap.
Sessions from the Meditate page are also saved as a meditation activity in Garmin Connect.
On the home page, press Start and pick a length from 1 to 60 minutes. From 30 minutes the picker warns about sleep inertia: after a longer nap you can wake from deep sleep feeling groggy. While the nap runs there are no cues and you cannot swipe to other pages; Start or Back stops it.
When your nap is over, the watch starts vibrating very gently and a little stronger every minute until you respond. Press Start to dismiss it, or the lower button to snooze for 5 minutes.
The Meditate page shows your stress level and breathing rate. Press Start and pick a length from 3 to 90 minutes. During the session a circle follows your own breathing, which the watch reads from your heartbeat, and its colour warms as your HRV rises. With the breathing pacer on, a thin ring shows when to breathe in and out, and a dim ring along the edge shows the time left.
To stop early, press Back twice: the first press asks end?. At the end the watch gives one soft pulse and shows how long you meditated and your highest HRV.
Your watch dims the screen after a few seconds without a touch; the session keeps running. Switch on Keep screen bright in the Meditate menu to keep it lit. It still dips briefly about once a minute: the watch does not let an AMOLED screen stay fully bright without a break, to protect it from burn-in.
The language your watch is set to. English and Dutch are written by us; the other 34 languages are machine translations, so some wording may be off. Spotted something odd? Let us know at [email protected].
It is no longer linked to an account, for example because it was unpaired on dreamcue.app or the account was deleted. Enter the new code on dreamcue.app to pair it again.
Per night: your deep, light and REM sleep and the time you were awake, with markers for the moments your watch gave a cue.
Below it, Your Sleep Architecture shows your average REM or deep-sleep profile across all nights. The shaded bands show how much your nights vary: a narrow band means your sleep is consistent from night to night.
The sleep timeline is built from the sleep data DreamCue imports from Garmin Connect. Connect your Garmin account under Settings → Garmin Connect, and your nights appear after the first sync.
The sleep page shows whether data from your watch is arriving. If it says no events have arrived, or the last one was long ago, check that your watch is paired and that the Garmin Connect app on your phone is running and connected to the watch.
Cues, naps and meditations appear after your watch has synced through the Garmin Connect app on your phone.
Sleep data from Garmin Connect is imported automatically on a schedule, covering the last 3 days each time. On the Garmin Connect page you can also start a sync yourself with Sync now.
Meditations of a minute or more from the watch app's Meditate page, and naps of a minute or more.
For naps you also see your HRV, when the watch recorded a clean heart-rate signal, and how you woke up: before the alarm, at the first alarm or after snoozing, and the alarm strength you usually got up at.
Heart-rate variability: how much the time between your heartbeats varies. The watch measures it as RMSSD over a rolling minute of beats. Higher values usually go with a calmer, more relaxed state, but the level differs a lot from person to person, so compare yourself with yourself.
No. DreamCue is a lucid-dreaming training tool. It does not diagnose, treat or monitor any medical condition, and its sleep stages and heart values are estimates, not a clinical sleep study. Use them to spot patterns, not to diagnose yourself.
When your watch asks "Did you dream?" and you answer yes, it can open a page on your phone where you speak or type your dream and say whether it was lucid. You can also add dreams on dreamcue.app, from the Dream Journal tile on the dashboard.
The journal is optional. You set it up once, with a passphrase and a recovery code.
No. Your journal is locked with a key that only your passphrase or your recovery code opens, and we never receive either of them. Typed dreams are encrypted in your browser before they are sent.
Spoken dreams are the one exception: our own server briefly hears the recording to turn it into text. It encrypts the text with your key straight away and deletes the recording. No third party is involved.
Choose Forgot your passphrase? when you unlock the journal and enter your recovery code. You then choose a new passphrase. Your recovery code stays the same and keeps working.
Then nobody can open your journal any more, not you and not us. You can start a new journal, but your earlier dreams stay locked for good. Their answers to "Was it lucid?" are kept.
Yes, under Settings → Dream Journal. A new recovery code replaces the old one, which then stops working.
It stays unlocked in a browser until you lock it, sign out or close the tab. After that you need your passphrase again.
Your journal lists those nights with an Add a dream button, so you can still write the dream down later.
This happens when no speech was heard, the recording was too long or it could not be read. A recording that is not transcribed within 24 hours is deleted. You can always type your dream instead.
Yes. In your journal, choose Delete on the dream and confirm. It is gone for good and cannot be undone; after 30 days it is gone from our backups too.
You do not need to unlock your journal for this, so you can also delete dreams that are locked with an older key.
Yes. Under Settings → Watch → Manage you see all your paired watches and can pair another one.
On the same page. Unpairing removes the watch and all the data it sent, and cannot be undone. If you unpair your last watch, you need to pair one again before you can use DreamCue.
No. Your Garmin email, password and any two-factor code go straight to Garmin. Garmin gives us access tokens, which we store encrypted and use only to fetch your sleep data.
Your Garmin session has expired, so automatic syncing has stopped. Sign in to Garmin again on the Garmin Connect page to resume.
The scheduled sync retries automatically. A banner tells you when the last sync failed, when no data has come in for more than 36 hours, or when several syncs in a row have failed. If it keeps failing, try Sync now or reconnect your account.
On our own server in Hetzner's data centre in Nuremberg, Germany. Connections run over HTTPS through Cloudflare. The privacy policy lists every party involved and what they handle.
No. We use your data only to run DreamCue. We do not sell it, use it for advertising or build profiles for third parties.
Heart rate, sleep and dream reports are health data under the GDPR, and we may only process them with your explicit consent. DreamCue cannot work without them, so we need that consent to create your account. You withdraw it by deleting your account.
Under Settings → Delete Account. This permanently removes your account, your paired watches with all their data, and your dream journal. After 30 days it is gone from our backups too.
Yes. Email [email protected] and we send it to you in a machine-readable format (JSON) within a month. Your dream journal is encrypted with a key only you hold, so we cannot export it readably: unlock it on dreamcue.app to read and copy your dreams.
Under Settings → Language. Until you choose one, DreamCue follows your browser's language.
Choose Forgot password? on the sign-in page and we email you a link to set a new one.
Email us at [email protected]. For everything about your data, read the privacy policy.