Install This Hidden IPhone Timer to Turn Off Music After You Fall Asleep
I rarely go to bed without something playing on my iPhone, usually a YouTube video. The problem is that I need to make sure the video is long enough for me to fall asleep, but not so long as to wake me up eventually. Also, I need to make sure autoplay is disabled, otherwise YouTube will browse the directory I recommend all night. At least I had to worry about it until I found out about my iPhone’s hidden sleep timer .
If you’re like me, this problem probably bothers you too. Maybe you fall asleep to a YouTube video, or you need to listen to your favorite soothing songs with an app like Apple Music. Many of these apps don’t have sleep timers, which means you’re probably used to waking up after a while to turn off the ringtones. Podcast fans are in luck, as sleep timers are pretty standard on these apps. Spotify is also good enough to offer a timer to automatically turn off music. But the rest are not so good.
While neither Apple Music nor YouTube has a built-in sleep timer on the iPhone, one is built into iOS. Apple doesn’t advertise it, but it works great. Interestingly, 9to5Google found a sleep timer in the latest beta version of Apple Music for Android. Either this indicates we’ll see sleep timers with iOS 16, or Apple thinks only Android listeners need sleep timers with Apple Music.
For now, we have to put up with the iPhone’s hidden sleep timer, which thankfully applies to any audio source on the device. Whether or not the app you’re using has a built-in sleep timer, the iOS option will disable playback as soon as the timer expires.
To use the timer, go to the Clock app and select Timers as usual. Select When Timer Ends, scroll to the bottom and tap Stop Playback. From here, you can select the duration, activate the timer, and be sure that any audio playback will stop when the time is up.
The best part of this sleep timer, in my opinion, is that iOS goes back to the lock screen at the same time audio playback stops. This way, your iPhone is guaranteed to go to sleep instead of staying active on an app you might have open. This isn’t an issue for background-playing apps like Apple Music, but since the free version of YouTube requires you to stay logged into the app in order to use it, this built-in sleep timer feature is very welcome.
However, be careful: iOS remembers the last selected timer “sound” for future timers. If you absent-mindedly set a timer without changing “Stop Playing”, the timer will not beep when triggered. If no sound is playing on your iPhone, you may not notice the timer go off at all, which could ruin dinner, your sleep, or whatever else you set the timer for.
[ 9to5Mac ]