Smartphones have become a big part of daily life, and I'm guilty of my phone being the first thing I attend to when I wake up. It's also the last thing I deal with before bed. Sometimes, the last thing I do is listen to some music on Spotify to lull myself to sleep. I don't do it often, but I did do that last night.
Spotify has a feature called Sleep Timer that allows you to choose a certain amount of time after which your music stops. That way, your music doesn't play endlessly after you're already asleep. If you find yourself falling asleep watching YouTube at night, it looks like there's a sleep timer feature in the works to spare your battery.
Digging Through The YouTube Beta APK Shows That The Sleep Timer Feature Is Being Planned
A sleep timer is a relatively popular find in apps that deal with music streaming and podcasts because it's pretty common for people to fall asleep while listening to these. These apps tend to keep going after one track or episode is completed, so you could potentially wake up with Spotify still playing. Using a sleep timer, you just set a time after which you assume you would have fallen asleep, and it will stop playback once that time has elapsed.
YouTube is one app that notably doesn't have a sleep timer. Think about it, there are some tracks that you can't find on music streaming platforms but exist on YouTube (in which case, Google might prefer you use YouTube Music since that app has a sleep timer) so you may play those to go to sleep. Or maybe, YouTube is the last thing you do before bed and you find yourself falling asleep while watching a two-hour disposition on an obscure McDonald's combo meal from the 90s.
Well, those are valid cases for a sleep timer on YouTube, and thankfully, the feature seems to be on its way. AssembleDebug and Android Authority did an APK teardown into the latest beta version of the app and found multiple references to a sleep timer feature. It looks like you'll be able to set a custom amount of time and not preset options like Spotify offers.
A Sleep Timer Isn't Just Useful For Your Battery Life
In my opinion, the major benefit of a sleep timer is to have mercy on your phone's battery. Nobody wants to have YouTube videos playing for several hours through the night. You're bound to wake up with half of your battery gone if your phone hasn't entirely died by that point. That's no fun, especially when you're in a rush to get the next day started.
That's not the only reason why I think a sleep timer is useful though. If you sleep in the same room with a partner, a sibling, or a friend, you might not want to have a YouTube video chirping on through the night while they're trying to sleep. Sure, some folks sleep like logs of wood, but others might find it hard to go back to sleep if they wake up and hear Mr. Beast talking constantly.
