> At least it's easy to get a home sleep apnea test and an APAP/CPAP these days.

If one wants to rule out sleep apean (being not the best sleeper) but probably doesn't have it (but other causes like stress) but at least want to measure it somewhat, how could one test that oneself with at least some probability?

Lots of things that are called "at home test" seem to involve getting special equipment and sending stuff to a lab anyway, that still involves a physician, some visitations with them etc... anyway.

Is there anything at all that one can do on their own to have at least some idea of the chances of having sleep apnea or not that does not involve a professional? Even if to then consider a professional if there are some indications? E.g. from an all-night audio recording, any indication of sounds that are yes or not sleep apnea indicating? And heartbeat/oxygen etc... measured by a watch?

Or is sleep apnea such a subtle and hard-to-detect issue that it's really impossible to self diagnose, it's such a subtle thing that only specialized equipment and specialists can do it, and trying to measure anything yourself gives no more answer than a 50/50 random chance coin toss?

The tester they give is basically just a pulse oximeter that logs your heart rate and SpO2 all night. I'm not sure how they interpret it, but I'd imagine that if your heart rate goes crazy and your oxygen drops, that's probably bad.

Otherwise you can look at questionnaires that ask things like whether you wake up a lot at night or snore, etc.

That said... it's pretty easy to just get a device that they give you that you connect to your phone to log data for a night. And they know what they're doing when they interpret it. So I would recommend that, since it's really easy to just go to a place and get a device and do a test.

This isn't like it used to be where you'd have to sleep in some strange place.

The at home tests require a quick before and after video call to a physician, and equipment mailed to you and mailed back... It's really not a big deal.