You can check for an irregular heartbeat at home by feeling your pulse at the wrist, using a smartwatch with an ECG feature, or watching for an irregular heartbeat indicator on a home blood pressure monitor. Each method has different strengths, and combining a simple pulse check with technology gives you the most complete picture.
How to Check Your Pulse by Hand
The simplest way to detect an irregular heartbeat requires nothing but your fingers and a clock. Turn one hand palm-up and find the area between your wrist bone and the tendon on your thumb side. Place the tips of your index and middle fingers from your other hand on that spot and press gently until you feel a beat. Use just enough pressure to feel each pulse. Pressing too hard actually blocks blood flow and makes counting impossible.
Count for a full 60 seconds. This is important because shorter counts (like 15 seconds multiplied by four) can mask irregularities that come and go. While you count, pay attention to the rhythm itself, not just the number. A healthy heartbeat has an even, steady spacing between beats, like a metronome. What you’re looking for is any pattern that breaks that consistency: beats that come too early, pauses that feel too long, or a rhythm that seems chaotic with no predictable pattern.
A normal resting heart rate for adults falls between 60 and 100 beats per minute. A rate consistently above 100 at rest (without exercise, caffeine, or anxiety as an obvious cause) or below 60 (unless you’re very fit) is worth noting. But rate alone doesn’t tell the full story. An irregular rhythm at a normal rate still matters.
What an Irregular Heartbeat Feels Like
Not everyone with an irregular rhythm feels it. Some people notice nothing at all, which is why active checking matters. When symptoms do appear, the most common sensation is palpitations: a fast, fluttering, or pounding feeling in the chest. It can feel like your heart skipped a beat, added an extra beat, or is racing for no clear reason.
Other sensations that often accompany an irregular rhythm include shortness of breath during activities that wouldn’t normally cause it, light-headedness or feeling like the room is tilting, and unusual fatigue. These symptoms can be intermittent, lasting seconds to minutes and then disappearing for days, which makes them easy to dismiss. If you experience any of these, checking your pulse during the episode captures information you can share with a doctor later.
Using a Smartwatch ECG
Consumer smartwatches with built-in ECG sensors have become remarkably accurate screening tools. A large diagnostic meta-analysis found that smartwatches overall detected atrial fibrillation (the most common serious irregular rhythm) with about 95% sensitivity and 97% specificity. That means they correctly identify the vast majority of true cases and rarely flag a normal rhythm as abnormal.
Performance varies by brand. Samsung devices showed 97% sensitivity and 96% specificity. The Apple Watch came in at 94% sensitivity and 97% specificity. Fitbit devices lagged behind, with only about 66% sensitivity, meaning they missed roughly one in three cases. If you’re buying a watch specifically for heart rhythm monitoring, the ECG-equipped models from Apple, Samsung, and Garmin perform best based on current data.
To take a reading, you typically open the ECG app, hold your finger on the watch’s crown or sensor, and stay still for 30 seconds. The watch generates a simplified version of the electrical tracing a doctor would see. Most devices will classify the result as “sinus rhythm” (normal), “atrial fibrillation,” or “inconclusive.” An inconclusive reading usually means too much motion or a poor signal, not a problem with your heart.
One key limitation: smartwatches are best at catching atrial fibrillation specifically. They’re less reliable for detecting other types of irregular rhythms, like premature beats or more complex arrhythmias.
Your Blood Pressure Monitor May Already Check
Many home blood pressure monitors include an irregular heartbeat indicator, often labeled “IHB” and shown as a small heart icon with a jagged line. These devices work by analyzing the spacing between pulse waves in the inflated cuff. When any beat deviates more than 25% from the average interval, the device flags it.
Research on Omron devices found a diagnostic accuracy of about 88% for detecting atrial fibrillation, with perfect sensitivity (catching 100% of true cases) but lower specificity around 85%. That means the monitor occasionally flags irregular rhythms that turn out to be harmless premature beats rather than atrial fibrillation. To improve reliability, take three consecutive readings. If the irregular heartbeat symbol appears on two or more of those three readings, the correlation with a true arrhythmia improves significantly.
These monitors work as screening tools only. A flashing IHB indicator is a reason to follow up, not a diagnosis.
Smartphone Camera Apps
Some smartphone apps claim to detect heart rhythm by using the phone’s camera and flashlight. You place your fingertip over the lens, and the app reads tiny color changes in your skin caused by blood pulsing through capillaries. This technique, called photoplethysmography, is the same basic technology behind pulse oximeters.
These apps measure heart rate reasonably well in healthy adults with a normal rhythm at rest. During actual arrhythmias, though, accuracy drops. Heart rhythm irregularities cause variations in both pulse timing and pulse strength that confuse the algorithm. The apps calculate heart rate from the pulse signal, and when beats are uneven, the math breaks down. For detecting whether your rhythm is regular or irregular, a smartwatch ECG or manual pulse check is more dependable.
Clinical Monitoring for Hard-to-Catch Rhythms
Some irregular heartbeats are intermittent, appearing for a few seconds or minutes and then vanishing. If your symptoms come and go, a single office visit or a one-time smartwatch reading might miss the problem entirely. Doctors have several tools designed for extended monitoring.
A Holter monitor is a small portable device with sticky electrode patches on your chest that records your heart’s electrical activity continuously for 24 to 48 hours. You wear it during normal daily activities, and it captures every beat. This works well when episodes happen at least once a day or two.
For less frequent episodes, an event monitor is more practical. You wear it for up to a month, but it doesn’t record continuously. Instead, you press a button when you feel symptoms, and the device saves several minutes of data, including a few minutes before you pressed the button. That “memory loop” feature is important because it captures the start of an episode even if you don’t react immediately. Some newer event monitors also activate automatically when they detect an abnormal rhythm, catching episodes you might sleep through or not notice.
Who Should Be Checking
Atrial fibrillation becomes increasingly common with age. Among adults 65 and older visiting primary care, the overall prevalence is about 13%. That breaks down sharply by age bracket: roughly 6% of people aged 65 to 69 have it, climbing to nearly 29% of those 85 and older. Many of these cases are discovered incidentally because the person never felt symptoms.
The American Heart Association recommends that adults over 65 have their pulse assessed during routine checkups, followed by an ECG if anything irregular is found. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, however, notes that evidence is still insufficient to recommend formal screening of all adults over 50 who have no symptoms. They do consider pulse palpation part of routine care, meaning your doctor should be feeling your pulse at regular visits already.
If you have risk factors for heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, or a family history of arrhythmias, periodic self-checks at home are a reasonable habit. Checking your pulse for 60 seconds a few times a week, especially when you feel “off,” builds a baseline so you’ll notice when something changes.
Symptoms That Need Emergency Care
Most irregular heartbeats are not emergencies, but some are. Get immediate help if an irregular or racing heartbeat comes with chest pain, significant shortness of breath, or fainting. A particularly dangerous arrhythmia called ventricular fibrillation causes a sudden drop in blood pressure that can lead to collapse within seconds, with breathing and pulse stopping shortly after. This requires calling 911 immediately.