Why Use a Sleep Timer?
Have you ever fallen asleep only to wake up in the morning to find out you forgot to turn the music or podcast off? For anyone who might rely on music or noise to help fall asleep, having a timer can be extra handy. The best reason to use a sleep timer is to avoid any potential battery drain that can come from letting your phone run all night. The second best reason is to avoid waking up and wondering why there is music still coming from your phone. Setting a sleep timer also ensures you don’t wake up too early because of music.
How to Set a Sleep Timer for Apple Music
The sleep timer works well with Apple’s default music app. This includes your own music as well as the Apple Music streaming service.
- Start by launching Control Center on your iPhone. If you have an iPhone 8 or earlier, swipe up from the bottom of the screen. If you are on the iPhone X or later, swipe down from the upper right of the screen. Alternatively, you can locate the Clock app anywhere on your home screen or in a folder.
- Tap on the timer button. This allows you to select how long you want the timer to run until you want the music to turn off.
- When you have entered in the time, tap on “When Timer Ends.” Now scroll all the way to the bottom of this screen until you see “Stop Playing.”
- Tap on “Stop Playing” and then hit “Set” in the upper-right corner. If the timer ends before you fall asleep, you can easily repeat the process and allow music to play a little longer.
How to Set a Sleep Timer with Spotify
Like Apple Music, Spotify has added its own version of a sleep timer so you can use its app to help fall asleep.
- To start the Sleep Timer, launch the Spotify application on your iPhone. Select any song or podcast you want to listen to and move into the “Now Playing” screen so that your song or podcast takes up the whole screen. Note that the sleep option will not be available if you are listening directly from a playlist or album.
- Press or tap on the “…” in the top-right corner of the screen.
- Scroll all the way down on the menu options that pop up until you locate “Sleep timer.”
- You can select from a few predetermined times before Spotify will automatically turn off. You can also choose to turn off Spotify at the end of a podcast episode. Either way, it acts in the same way as Apple Music, but you can only choose from the predetermined time allotments. That’s it. You are all set with Spotify automatically turning off when you wish. With both Spotify and Apple Music enabling sleep timers, you’ve covered a good portion of the streaming music. Unfortunately, apps like YouTube Music have yet to bring a sleep timer feature, but hopefully that will happen down the road. If you are using Android instead, here is how you can set a music sleep timer in Android.
