Drift off to Sleep

Do you like to be lulled off to sleep listening to music or watching a calming video? The downside can be having whatever is playing wake you back up when there’s an unexpected change in tone or volume. Or if you’re like me, the simple act of turning off whatever is playing on your device once you’re sufficiently sleepy can be enough to bring you out of your soporific state to wakefulness. If so, this simple tip should help solve the dilemma.

You can use your iPhone’s timer to automatically stop whatever music or video you have playing in however long you choose. In this way you can greatly reduce the risk you’ll be jolted out of sleep by the very media that was meant to help you drift off.

Here are the simple steps:

1. Go to Clock

2. Select Timer

3. Set your desired number of hours and/or minutes (or seconds if you are a sleep champion!). You can do this by scrolling or spinning the selected column up or down.

4. Scroll down to select “When timer ends…”

5. Scroll to the bottom (past the alarm melody choices) and choose “Stop playing”

6. Choose “Set”

7. Finally hit “Start” to begin the timer

The music or video will simply stop, and no alarm will sound.

If you’re playing music on an app like Spotify for example, you can set the timer either before you start the music or once the music is already playing. If you’re watching a video on YouTube, for example, you can do either, however the video will automatically stop when you toggle over to your clock/timer app, so you’ll need to toggle back to video anyway to re-start it once you’ve set the timer.

Why not run a little test now? Set some music to play then set the timer for 30 seconds or a minute and you’ll see for yourself that it shuts off at the end of the time without an alarm and helpfully holds your place on the song or video (should you need more time). By trying it out now, you’ll build muscle memory so when you do want to use this trick to fall asleep you won’t have to head back over to Gransplain to brush up on the steps….they’ll be second nature to you.

Sweet dreams!

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