This week, a massive Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage knocked out not only half the internet, but also Eight Sleep’s smart sleep systems costing several thousand dollars. Users complained that some were woken by unbearable heat from an overheating mattress, while others got stuck in an elevated position and couldn’t lie flat. Now many Eight Sleep owners have taken an interest in jailbreaking.
A major outage in the AWS US-EAST-1 cluster led to the shutdown of thousands of internet services worldwide. Customers of the Lloyds and Halifax banks were unable to access their accounts, United Airlines halted flight check-in, and owners of Eight Sleep systems woke up to find that without an internet connection their beds cannot function properly.
Eight Sleep is a smart sleep system with prices starting at US$2,700. Users buy the mattress themselves, and the company sells them a special Pod cover with a control hub.
Additionally, for an extra few thousand, you can purchase a base with adjustable mattress positioning, biometric sleep sensors, and heating and cooling options. Another mandatory add-on is a subscription to Eight Sleep’s services, costing from $17 to $33 per month. For example, users have access to the Autopilot feature, which is supposed to automatically select optimal sleep conditions, with annual subscription pricing starting at $199.
At the same time, all of Eight Sleep’s features are entirely dependent on the cloud, and if the servers go down or the customer loses internet, the system is effectively bricked. There is no offline mode: although the devices have physical buttons, they still need an internet connection to function.
“Turns out when my internet goes down, my bed goes on strike. A small hiccup — and that’s it, no position changes even manually,” writes one of the affected users in r/eightsleep. “Maybe give people some kind of grace period before their $5,000 bed locks itself in the ergonomic sitting position? An attack on AWS or a couple of hours without internet shouldn’t put my bed out of commission.”
“Cloud-only is unacceptable,” protests another user. “It’s 2025; there’s no reason an internet outage or AWS server issues should affect the sleep of your entire customer base, especially given your product’s price.”
Some owners complained that the offline devices kept them awake for hours. Others said they woke up in the middle of the night in a pool of sweat but couldn’t adjust the temperature. Even basic functions like alarms failed because Eight Sleep’s servers were unavailable.
The company’s CEO and co-founder, Matteo Franceschetti, apologized to users on X and said that Eight Sleep has begun rolling out an offline mode for its products that allows the system to be controlled via Bluetooth when the servers are unavailable.
“During the outage, you will be able to open the app, turn the Pod on or off, adjust the temperature level, and lower the base,” Eight Sleep representatives told The Verge.
Despite the emergency rollout of an offline mode, many users are wondering why Eight Sleep didn’t offer local control earlier. After all, this isn’t the company’s first outage, and users themselves can experience internet connectivity issues. Moreover, people fear that if Eight Sleep ever shuts down, smart sleep systems costing over $5,000 could be bricked.
“When ES eventually goes bankrupt, our Pods will turn into bricks,” writes one device owner on Reddit. “The fact that the Pod can’t be controlled without the internet is just a nightmare. I wish I’d known that before buying.”
“I’m terrified that I’ve made my sleep — and therefore my health — dependent on a cloud provider’s reliability,” says another user.
It’s worth noting that some Eight Sleep owners had found a solution even before the global AWS outage: a Pod jailbreak. There’s an active channel on Discord for these enthusiasts, and on GitHub you can find all the jailbreak developments.
“Allows you to fully control the device without the need for an internet connection. If your internet goes out, your Pod WILL NOT SHUT DOWN; it will keep running,” the repository description reads.