10 Life Hacks Every Oura Ring User Should Know
I’ve been tracking my sleep and recovery with the Oura ring for almost five years now , and today I’m sharing a few of my favorite and often overlooked features, including one feature you should turn off and one feature you can use even if your subscription has expired.
Turn off the blood oxygen sensor to save battery life.
The Oura ring consumes significantly more battery power when the blood oxygen sensor is enabled. This feature may be beneficial for certain health conditions, but most people don’t need it on a daily basis.
The blood oxygen level measurement feature is located in the hamburger menu, and you can disable it there. You’ll lose the “average blood oxygen level” and “breathing regularity” metrics, but you’ll gain about a day of extra battery life.
Sync your workouts so you don’t have to record them all with your ring.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the Oura ring isn’t the best workout tracker. Wearing the ring interferes with weight training, and it’s not accurate enough to seriously track other types of exercise, like running.
Oura complements other workout apps perfectly. If you track your workouts using another device or even a mobile app, such as the Apple Fitness app , you can ensure those workouts are synced correctly so they appear in your Oura feed. Go to Settings , then Apple Health (iPhone) or Health Connect (Android). Enable these integrations there.
Tag automatically detected workouts (and have a laugh if appropriate).
In addition to synced workouts, Oura will automatically detect workouts it thinks you’re doing. You’ll then see a card asking you to name the workout. Don’t ignore these cards—Oura learns based on your tags.
So, if you went for a walk, make sure it’s marked as a walk. But sometimes the system might mark another activity as a workout, even though it’s not. I’ve seen brushing my hair and spinning yarn both marked as different types of exercise. Look at the time the activity was logged and remember what you were actually doing at that moment. (You can ignore the activity if it wasn’t a workout or you’re not interested in tracking it.)
Let’s take a look at the charging case.
The Oura ring only needs to be charged once or twice a week, but that means it’s difficult to develop a habit of charging it regularly. I’ve found the perfect balance is charging it during a workout at the gym; some prefer charging it in the shower.
The ideal way to maintain battery charge is to briefly charge it every few days. (Charging every day is probably too frequent; charging only when the battery is completely discharged is probably too infrequent.) Oura recommends keeping the battery charge between 25% and 80% most of the time, if possible.
So, figure out where and when it’s most convenient for you to charge your device, and keep the charger there. That’s why the charging case is so convenient—you can carry it in your gym bag, for example. Unfortunately, the charging case costs an extra $99 , but no one said owning an Oura ring was cheap.
Check the tags and ring fashion trends.
The “Trends” section of the hamburger menu is one of Oura’s best hidden features. Tap it, and you can see changes over the past few weeks. For example, as I write this, I see that my resting heart rate has improved over the past eight weeks, returning to my “baseline” after a period when it was higher than normal.
If you’ve been diligent in tracking your behavioral and lifestyle factors, you can see their impact on your alertness, sleep, activity, or stress levels. For example, I want to see if my mood improves when I take a vitamin D supplement in the winter. Mood isn’t one of the metrics Oura tracks, but I can tap “Trends,” then select “Stress ,” ” Sleep,” or even “Activity” (all of which tend to worsen when I’m feeling down) and see if the days I marked as “vitamin-free” correlate with higher or lower vitamin levels.
Log your meals without tracking calories.
Meal tracking was added in addition to glucose tracking, but you don’t need to track glucose to use this feature. Record your meals (you can even take a photo of your plate), and Oura will provide you with feedback on how healthy your meal was and track whether you’re eating on a regular schedule. Calorie tracking is not included. In fact, if you prefer not to track calories in the Oura app at all, see the next point.
Adjust your activity goal.
The Oura app will set a daily activity goal for you, typically a specific number of calories. If you feel your goals are too ambitious (or not ambitious enough), go to the Activity screen and select “Edit Activity Goal.” You can choose a different goal and specify whether you want to see this goal in calories or steps.
If you’d prefer not to see your calories anywhere in the app, there’s a toggle for that. On the same screen, select ” Disable Calorie Counting.” This will set your step count goal and ensure that calorie counts are hidden elsewhere in the app. You can also access the “Disable Calorie Counting” feature under “Settings” and then “Activity.”
Use standby mode for travel, period tracking, and more.
Oura has a rest mode designed for times when you’re sick or recovering from an injury. (Oura may even suggest you turn it on if your data shows you’re not feeling well.)
But this app is useful for more than just that. Rest Mode pauses your goals and stops showing you readiness scores. It’s great for those times when you don’t want the app to bother you with what you should be doing. I’ve seen Oura users say they use it on days during their menstrual cycle when they don’t feel ready for their usual activities. It’s also useful for traveling when you know you’ll be spending the whole day in a car or on a plane, or when your sleep will suffer due to jet lag.
Use Labs to participate in research (and get early access to new features).
If you enjoy testing new features, check out the “Lab” section of the hamburger menu. The features offered will change from time to time, but they’re often new features in development. Right now, I only see the Blood Pressure Profile study , where Oura is collecting data to hopefully offer blood pressure assessments in the app in the future.
When I signed up, I had to fill out a questionnaire and sign a consent form to participate in a study. (Not all Oura Labs products are subject to research, but they may be.) I see that Oura believes I probably don’t have hypertension (which is correct), and that it bases this in part on my healthy resting heart rate and activity level. Other Oura features, such as food tracking and symptom radar, are new to Labs.
Download your data from the cloud
This is one of Oura’s lesser-known features: a web dashboard where you can view long-term trends and a “member center” where you can download all your data. Downloading this spreadsheet is available even without an active subscription, but viewing trends and all the software features mentioned above requires a subscription.
To view your data on the web, go to cloud.ouraring.com . Click “Trends” to see all your data—in my case, five years. You can even compare two variables and see a calculation showing whether they are correlated. My sleep quality score and total sleep time are highly correlated; heart rate variability and sleep time are not.
To download CSV spreadsheets with your data (with or without a subscription), go to the Members section and log in. Select “Export Data” and then “Request Data.” You’ll receive a ZIP file with your spreadsheets, which you can analyze as needed.