Drowsie V3 is a thin speaker that goes under your pillow and plays your sleep sounds so only you hear them — no earbuds, no room noise, nothing your partner has to put up with. That part isn't new. What's new is everything around it: V3 has motion-based sleep tracking built into the speaker itself, an Autopilot that learns which sounds actually settle you and plays them through the night, a smart alarm that wakes only you, a partner mode for two sleepers, and over-the-air updates so the speaker keeps improving after it arrives.
It ships in September as part of a Sleep Club membership — $199 AUD / $149 USD per year, with the speaker included in your first year — and it's covered by a 60-night guarantee. This is the full story: where Drowsie started, what V3 adds, how the membership works, and how to get one.
Where Drowsie began
The original Drowsie was built around one simple observation: sound travels through a pillow surprisingly well. Put a thin speaker under your pillow, and audio reaches your ear clearly at a volume so low that the person beside you hears almost nothing. No earbuds working loose at 2am. No phone speaker filling the room. Just your sounds, private to your side of the bed.
People used it with the Drowsie app — a library of soundscapes, sleep stories, meditations and wind-down programs. You picked what helped you drift off, pressed play, and went to sleep. It did that one thing well, and for a lot of people it was enough.
But it had an honest limitation: the speaker played sounds and knew nothing about your sleep. It couldn't tell whether you'd drifted off in ten minutes or lain awake for an hour. It couldn't tell which sounds were actually working and which ones you just liked the idea of. Every choice was a guess, and the guessing was all yours.
V3 exists to close that gap.
What's new in V3
Sleep tracking built into the speaker
V3 senses your sleep through motion — and the sensing lives in the speaker itself, not in anything you wear. No ring, no watch, no headband, nothing on your body. Because the speaker is already under your pillow, it's in the right place to notice how your night actually went: when you settled, when you were restless, when you were still.
It's worth being clear about what this is and isn't. Drowsie reads movement, not brain activity. It won't hand you a chart of sleep stages, and we don't think it should pretend to. What it gives you is a motion picture of the night that's honest about what it can see — and that turns out to be enough to do something genuinely useful, which is the next part. There's more on how the sensing works at the science page.
Autopilot: it learns which sounds settle you
This is the reason V3 was built. Calm plays sleep sounds. Drowsie learns which ones actually put YOU to sleep.
Over your first nights, Autopilot pays attention to what happens after each sound plays. Did you settle quickly, or toss for a while? Which sounds coincided with your stillest starts to the night? Everyone's answer is different — rain works for one person and irritates another — and the only way to find yours has always been slow trial and error, half-remembered through the fog of bedtime.
Autopilot does the trial and error for you. Once it has a read on what settles you, it plays those sounds through the night — quietly, automatically, fading as you drift off, returning if the night gets restless. You can always override it and choose for yourself; the app's full library is still there. But most nights, the point is that you don't have to think about it at all. The full walkthrough is on the how-it-works page.
A smart alarm only you hear
The same under-pillow placement that keeps your sounds private does the same for your alarm. V3 wakes you with gentle sound through the pillow, rising slowly rather than jolting you — and your partner sleeps straight through it.
Because the speaker senses motion, the alarm can also pick its moment. Set your wake time, and near that time Drowsie looks for a point when you're naturally stirring anyway, and starts there. Waking with your body's own movement, rather than against it, tends to feel less brutal — and either way, you're up by the time you asked for.
Partner mode
Two people rarely want the same sounds, the same volume, or the same wake time. Partner mode is the straightforward answer: two speakers, one under each pillow. Each person gets their own sounds, their own Autopilot learning their nights, their own alarm, and their own sleep picture in the app. Nobody compromises, and nobody hears the other's audio. If this is the problem you're trying to solve, we've written a fuller guide to listening in bed without disturbing your partner.
Over-the-air updates
V3's firmware updates arrive over the air, through the app — no cables, no ritual. The speaker that arrives in September is the starting point, not the finished state: as Autopilot and the rest of the system improve, those improvements reach the speaker already under your pillow.
The speaker itself
The hardware is deliberately unremarkable in the best way — it's designed to disappear.
- About 240 × 80 × 12 mm — roughly the footprint of a phone, and thin enough that you don't feel it under the pillow
- Fabric-wrapped, with the USB-C charging port tucked under a zip cover
- Rechargeable battery — a full charge takes about 5 hours from any USB source
- One button, and a soft light that pulses while charging and holds steady when full
- Setup takes about 5 minutes with the app
The app is on the App Store for iOS, with Google Play listed on the setup page.
How the membership works
Drowsie is a membership rather than a gadget purchase, and it's worth explaining plainly why.
Sleep Club costs $199 AUD / $149 USD per year, and the speaker ships included with your first year. One price covers everything: the speaker, the full sound library, Autopilot, the smart alarm, partner-mode support, weekly insights from the in-app sleep coach, and every over-the-air update. There's no separate hardware price and no features held back behind extra tiers.
The reason for the model is that Drowsie isn't finished when it ships — the learning, the library and the software are the product as much as the speaker is, and they keep getting better. A membership keeps the incentives honest: Drowsie only works as a business if it keeps working for your sleep, year after year. The full details are on the Sleep Club page.
Every membership is covered by the 60-night guarantee: use Drowsie on at least 30 of your first 60 nights, and if it isn't working for you, you get a refund. The 30-night condition exists because sleep habits take time to shift — a fair trial means actually sleeping with it, not trying it twice and deciding. Shipping is free worldwide.
If you own an original Drowsie: V1 and V2 owners get a free year of the app, and there's an upgrade path to V3 if you want the new speaker.
Ships September — the waitlist goes first
Drowsie V3 ships in September. Checkout opens at launch, and the waitlist gets first access — so if you want a speaker from the first run, joining the waitlist is the way to do it. It costs nothing and commits you to nothing; it just puts you at the front of the line.
The honest summary
If sleep sounds already help you drift off but your current setup is earbuds, a phone on the nightstand, or a speaker your partner tolerates, V3 is the version of that idea that was actually designed for a shared bed — private audio, nothing to wear, and a system that quietly learns what works for you instead of leaving you to guess. It won't diagnose anything, and it doesn't claim to read your brain. It plays the right sounds, notices how your nights go, and gets better at both.
If you're weighing it against other options first, our complete guide to under-pillow speakers covers the whole category, and the FAQ answers the practical questions. When you're ready, September isn't far away.