If you’re like me, watching shows in bed at the end of a long day is a great way to relax.
However, when I’m excited and Netflix keeps running (sometimes for hours on end), it’s painful the next day to have to try to find my place again. Some apps have built-in sleep timers, but many (like Netflix) still don’t.
I had a new baby six months ago and I also have a two-year-old, so I can safely say that at the end of most days I’m pretty exhausted. The last thing at night, I feed my baby (watching a show on my iPad, propped up on my nightstand), then I lie down for a while waiting for her to fall asleep and so I can get some sleep too.
As you can imagine, it doesn’t actually take me long to fall asleep, but I like the comfort of the screen playing as I fall asleep. However, after consistently falling asleep within 10 to 20 minutes, but finding that my shows continued playing for hours, I started looking for a solution.
Find the sleep timer
It’s not an obvious scenario, so you’ll be forgiven for missing it. Go to your device Clock appand play the timers configuration. I’m sure you’ve used it for other things, like cooking or as a reminder to do something.
Touch ‘When the stopwatch ends’ and scroll all the way past all the ringtone options, and you will see ‘Stop playing’ is listed.
Tap this and when the timer ends, your Netflix show (or other streaming service) will stop and your iPad/iPhone will lock. You will need tap ‘Set’ The first time you do it, you’ll know if you’ve done it right, because when you return to the main stopwatch screen, it will now say “Stop Playing” next to “When the stopwatch ends.”
Depending on how sleepy I am, I set the timer between 5 and 20 minutes; I usually have a pretty good idea of how much time I’ll need. Then the next day when I watch/listen to the show again, I know I’ll only have a maximum of the timer setting to rewind and continue playing from where I left off.
Until I have a device that recognizes exactly when my eyes are closed, it’s the best option.
More timer settings
A few more timer settings can help make your life easier. A quick way to switch between different alarm lengths (say you want 5 minutes one night, 20 minutes another night, and 10 minutes on a different night) is to use the ‘Recent.
Scroll past the “When the timer ends” section and you should see a list of all recently used alarms. Now you can just tap on the one I want without having to set the timer at the top. Precious seconds saved!
This is also useful if you use the timer for other things during the day, such as while cooking. I’ve labeled my timers as “Bedtime” to make sure I have “Stop Playing” set. You can set a label when you’re originally creating a timer, changing it from ‘Timer’ to whatever you want.
Control Center and Siri
You can also use Control Center and Siri; The latter is quite useful if you need to be hands-free, perhaps if your iPad is propped up in a cabinet a little out of reach.
For Control Center, which is the set of options that appear when you swipe down from the top right corner, you can add a Timer control here. After you swipe down, press and hold on an empty area of the screen, tap “Add a control,” and look for Timer in the list of options.
Once added, you have two options. Tap once and you’ll get to the usual Timer options, but you can also tap and hold the timer icon and then swipe up and down on the screen to add or remove time, a bit like you do when adding or reducing torch brightness. Please note that with this you must have already set the timer to “Stop Playing” before.
Lastly, of course, you can also use Siri. You’ll need to hold down the Side/Home button or say “Hey Siri” followed by “set a 10-minute sleep.” Timer” to activate the “Stop Playback” function. Be sure to include the word “Sleep” before the Timer, or you will wake up abruptly when it passes.
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