If you enjoy watching YouTube videos as you wind down for sleep, you’ve likely noticed a significant missing feature in the mobile apps: there’s no built-in way to automatically stop playback after a specified period — in other words, no sleep timer.
However, there’s good news on the horizon. The latest teardown of the YouTube app for Android reveals that a sleep timer feature is currently under development. Strings found in the app’s code strongly suggest this upcoming addition.
Once implemented, the sleep timer will allow you to set a duration after which playback will automatically pause. If you’re still awake when the timer ends, you’ll have the option to either reset it or continue watching without any interruption. You’ll be able to specify the timer duration in hours and minutes, and the remaining time will be conveniently displayed as a notification.
While YouTube Music and several other streaming and podcast apps already offer sleep timers, YouTube itself has been notably absent from this functionality. Given YouTube’s popularity, the addition of a sleep timer will be warmly welcomed by users when it finally arrives.
The absence of a native sleep timer is less of an issue for iOS users, who can utilize a system-wide timer to halt playback across all apps when it expires. However, this option is not available on Android, making the impending addition of a sleep timer to the YouTube app particularly significant for Android users.
