Pokémon Sleep

Pokémon Sleep is a sleep-tracking mobile app built around the idea of turning bedtime into gameplay, with players logging naps to attract Pokémon that gather around a giant sleeping Snorlax1. The Pokémon Company pitched it as a follow-up in spirit to Pokémon GO, aiming to do for sleeping what that game did for walking2. Sleep sessions are scored and categorized into styles like dozing, snoozing and slumbering, which determine which Pokémon show up in the morning.

Online, the game turned into a running joke well before it was even playable, with users treating the announcement as an excuse to imagine Pokémon versions of every other lifestyle app1. After the July 2023 launch, the community pivoted to memes about grinding sleep data, hoarding phones to hunt shiny Pokémon, and thirsting over Professor Neroli, the pink-haired sleep researcher who narrates the game3.

In the app itself, players place their phone on the mattress at bedtime, let the microphone and accelerometer log the night, and wake up to a "sleep style" reading that dictates which Pokémon join Snorlax's research site. As a meme, the format usually shows either a person setting up an absurd number of phones to game the tracker (the shiny hunter joke) or fan art of Professor Neroli, the pink-haired sleep scientist added in the 2023 release3.