How to stop others snoring starts with accepting that you can change the night but not the snorer: you can protect your own sleep with sound, space and position, but stopping the snoring itself depends on its cause, which sometimes needs a doctor. In a small Mayo Clinic study of 10 couples, removing a man's snoring and apnea raised the partner's sleep efficiency from 74% to 87%, and lowered the partner's arousals per hour from 21 to 12, so the loss of sleep is real and measurable. Loudness is a poor guide to danger: group averages rose from 46.3 dB in people without apnea to 60.5 dB in the most severe group, but an expert consensus says acoustic data alone should not grade snoring. A recording, played back in daylight and with their agreement, is the most useful tool you have for starting the talk.
It is a particular kind of tired: not the tiredness of a short night, but the tiredness of lying in the dark, rehearsing what you will say in the morning, and feeling guilty about being angry at someone for something they cannot hear. If you are asking how to stop others snoring, you probably are not looking for a medical lecture. You want to sleep, and you want to keep liking the person beside you.
That is two goals, and they have different answers. One is about your own night, and it can be fixed this week. The other is about theirs, and it depends on why they snore.
How to stop others snoring: the honest split between your night and theirs
Asked how to stop someone snoring immediately, most partners reach for a shove, and a shove can stop a snore for a minute. The assumption behind it is that snoring can be switched off from outside. Mostly it cannot. A determined partner can learn to roll the sleeper over, but whether the snoring comes back depends on the same things it always did.
So it helps to treat it as two separate projects. The first is how to get your own sleep back while the snoring is still going on. The second is how to get someone to stop snoring in the sense that matters: working out the cause, with them, and not at 3 a.m.
Why this is worth the effort: what a partner's sleep loses
If anyone has told you that you will get used to it, here is the experiment that answers that. At the Mayo Clinic, ten married couples slept in a laboratory with both people wired up at once. In the middle of the night the snorer, who had suspected sleep apnea and was male in every case, was given nasal CPAP set to remove the snoring and the breathing events. The apnea-hypopnea index of the patients fell from a median of 26 to 7. In their spouses, arousals per hour fell from 21 to 12, and sleep efficiency rose from 74% to 87%. The authors worked out that this is about 62 more minutes of sleep a night for the spouse.
Beninati W, Harris CD, Herold DL, Shepard JW. The effect of snoring and obstructive sleep apnea on the sleep quality of bed partners. Mayo Clin Proc 1999. PMID 10918859
The study is small, the snorers were all men and the intervention was a medical device in a lab. But the point survives all that: the sleep loss is not in your head, it is something that was measured, and it persisted in people who were used to it.
How to sleep when someone is snoring: what you can do tonight
Advice on how to sleep when someone is snoring comes by the thousand and has almost no trials behind it. Here is what is reasonable, and where evidence is missing.
- Block or mask the sound. Earplugs and white noise are the oldest answers. White noise machines for snoring are easy to buy and the best ear plugs for snoring are easy to argue about, but I could not verify a trial that tests either for a snoring partner, so I do not rank any of them. Try cheap versions, and give each one a few nights.
- Make the space bigger. Two mattresses, or a spare room on the worst nights, is not a failure of the relationship. Many couples find that one honest night apart a week saves the other six.
- Change the sleeper's position, gently. Some people snore less off their backs. The evidence is mixed and I go through it in the article on sleep position: it can help the right people and does nothing for others.
- Go to bed first, or fall asleep before them. It is folk wisdom, not a finding, and it works for some people.
None of these treats the snoring. They are about getting you through the night, which is a legitimate goal on its own.
How to get someone to stop snoring: start from the cause
Nobody can have this conversation at 3 a.m., and the only version that works is the one you have in daylight. The things with evidence are: alcohol close to bedtime, which raised the apnea-hypopnea index by 3.98 events per hour in a pooled analysis of 13 laboratory studies, body weight, which is covered in weight loss for snoring, and a blocked nose, covered in the nose article.
Burgos-Sanchez C, Jones NN, Avillion M, Gibson SJ, Patel JA, Neighbors J, Zaghi S, Camacho M. Impact of Alcohol Consumption on Snoring and Sleep Apnea: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg 2020. PMID 32513091
An international panel of 35 ear, nose and throat experts took the partner seriously in a way older guidance did not. Their 2026 consensus on snoring without apnea says severity should be judged by how often someone snores, what the bed partner complains about and how it affects the couple's quality of life. It also says to reassess after three to six months. In other words, your complaint is not a side issue, it is part of the measurement.
Carrichon H, Favier V, Cammaroto G, Dos Santos H, de Vito A, Zancanella E, Cahali MB, Moniri A, Carrasco-Llatas M, Ravesloot M, Alkan U, Cheong RCT, Lechien JR, Maniaci A, O'Connor C, Salamanca F, Jacobowitz O, Abedipour D, Decotte A, Schmitt D, Lestang P, Yona L, Huth J, Bastier PL, Dufour X, De Vries N, Winck JC, Olszewska E, Allali L, Lisan Q, Carsuzaa F. Definition of severity, management, and follow-up of isolated snoring in adults: An international consensus. Eur Ann Otorhinolaryngol Head Neck Dis 2026. PMID 42049645
Is it just snoring, or something to check? Listen for pauses, not volume
Loud is not the same as dangerous, and quiet is not the same as safe. Across 1,643 habitual snorers who had overnight sleep studies with measured snoring loudness, the average rose in steps with apnea severity: 46.3 dB in people with an apnea-hypopnea index under 5, up to 60.5 dB in those over 50, with a correlation of 0.66. That is a trend across a large group.
Maimon N, Hanly PJ. Does snoring intensity correlate with the severity of obstructive sleep apnea? J Clin Sleep Med 2010. PMID 20957849
It does not tell you whether the person next to you is in the loud or the quiet half of their group, and the 2026 consensus above advises against grading snoring by acoustic data alone. What should send someone to a doctor is the pattern around the noise: pauses in breathing that you notice, gasping or choking, daytime sleepiness, morning headaches. Is snoring bad for you goes through the warning signs.
A recording starts the talk. Do it kindly
The hardest part of telling someone they snore is that they have no evidence except your word, and you are tired and irritable. A recording changes that. It is not an accusation; it is a thing you can both listen to.
- Ask first. Say you want to record a few nights to see what is going on, and why. Secret recordings tend to start fights, not treatment, and the rules on recording people vary from place to place.
- Put the phone near the snorer's side of the bed, a metre or two from the pillow, and record several nights, not one. One bad night proves little.
- In the morning, listen together. Skip to the loudest stretch, and to any pause that ends with a gasp. Those are the moments a doctor will want to hear.
- Do not play the whole night. Five clips and a number are enough.
On accuracy: one validated example is a paid phone app called Snore Clock, which in 201 recordings from 11 patients agreed closely with an ear, nose and throat specialist listening to the same audio (correlation 0.907). The app detected snoring with 78% sensitivity and 97% specificity on average, and missed more snoring when there was a lot of it. That says something about phone microphones in general and nothing about any specific app, SleepTrace included.
Chiang JK, Lin YC, Lin CW, Ting CS, Chiang YY, Kao YH. Validation of snoring detection using a smartphone app. Sleep Breath 2022. PMID 33811634
If you use SleepTrace, each snoring episode is marked with a loudness reading and a playable clip, and apparent pauses in breathing are flagged with the recording attached. One real limit: the microphone records the room, so if you both snore, the clips are how you find out whose is whose. It is a wellness app and does not diagnose sleep apnea.
If the recording contains pauses followed by gasps, or the snorer is very sleepy by day, wakes with headaches or has high blood pressure, suggest a doctor visit and bring the clips. Do not wait for the snoring to improve on its own. This article does not diagnose anyone.
Frequently asked questions
Protect your own sleep first: blocking or masking the sound is the quickest relief. Beyond that, a sleeping partner who rolls onto their side sometimes snores less, though the studies do not promise it. I could not verify a trial that compares earplugs or white noise for this specific problem, so I do not rank them.
You cannot make someone stop, and nudging them awake all night rarely works. What helps is working out why they snore: weight, alcohol before bed, a blocked nose, sleeping on the back, or sleep apnea. A recording played back in daylight is a good way to start that talk, and a doctor can look into the cause.
Yes, measurably. In a study of 10 couples sleeping in a laboratory, the partners' arousals per hour fell from 21 to 12 and their sleep efficiency rose from 74% to 87% once the snorer's snoring and apnea were treated. The group was small and all the snorers were men, so treat it as a clear signal and not a precise figure.
It is a possible sign, not a diagnosis. In 1,643 habitual snorers, average snoring loudness rose from 46.3 dB in people with an apnea-hypopnea index under 5 to 60.5 dB in those over 50. But a 2026 expert consensus says acoustic parameters alone should not be used to grade severity. Pauses in breathing, gasping and daytime sleepiness matter more than volume.
SleepTrace is a wellness app, not a medical device. This article is general information, not medical advice. If your symptoms are frequent, severe or worrying, please talk to a doctor.
Hear your own night. SleepTrace turns a night of audio into your sleep phases, the sounds you made, and how it all trends. No wearable, just your phone on the nightstand. Get it for iPhone or Android →