Spotify is testing a sleep timer, but only for podcasts

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There are a lot of online music streaming services to choose from right now. The more popular options include the likes of Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Pandora, Tidal, and YouTube Music. With this much competition going on it pushes each company to improve their platform and innovate whenever possible so they have a unique feature the competition doesn’t have. Spotify added support for podcasts, video, and context-based listening back in 2015, and their podcast selection keeps growing. Some leaked screenshots indicate that the developers over at Spotify are working on adding a sleep timer to their application, but one that only works with podcasts.

Sleep timers can be an integral part of a person’s sleeping habits. Growing up, I was the kid who put on some syndicated sitcom when it was bedtime. This became a habit where it was difficult to sleep when there was just complete silence. But leaving your device on all night isn’t necessary when it only takes less than an hour to fall asleep. That’s where sleep timers come in.

We have featured apps that silences any music after a certain amount of time, but it’s usually better to have it built right into the player itself. Searching for Spotify and sleep timer in Google shows a bunch of requests from iOS and Android users. Just like when Spotify began testing a Safety Mode user interface when your device was connected to Bluetooth, the company has continued to stay in touch with the community and add some of the most critical features. So they know a sleep timer is something their 70+ million paying members and 30+ million free users.

Spotify is working on Sleep Timer, currently for Podcasts. pic.twitter.com/z6Nz2AtuiA — Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) August 2, 2018

A set of four screenshots of the Spotify application has been leaked, thanks to @wongmjane, where it shows a sleep timer option. Those who listen to podcasts as they sleep will be very happy to see this feature roll out. That is because during this current testing phase of the feature, it is only available for Spotify’s podcasts feature. It’s unclear if this feature will always be exclusive to podcasts or if they will expand it to other parts of the application once this test is complete.