There’s a 'secret' sleep timer hidden in your iPhone and iPad – here's how to unlock it for Netflix

A young woman falling asleep in bed while watching her tablet

(Image credit: Getty Images / Guido Mieth)

If you’re anything like me, watching shows in bed at the end of a long day is a great way to unwind.

However, when I’m spark out and Netflix is still running – sometimes for hours on end – it’s a pain the next day having to trying 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’ve also got a two-year-old, so it’s safe to say that at the end of most days I’m pretty exhausted. Last thing at night, I’ll feed my baby (watching a show on my iPad, propped up on my bedside table), then lie down for a bit waiting for her to fall asleep and for me to get some much-needed shut-eye, too.

As you can imagine, it doesn’t actually take me that long to go to sleep, but, I like the comfort of the screen playing while I drift off. However, after consistently falling asleep within 10-20 minutes, but finding my shows continued to play for sometimes hours on end, I went looking for a solution.

Find the sleep timer

Two iPhones on a green and blue background showing the Timer settings — You can set a custom sleep timer for the likes of Netflix in the Clock app (above) – it's the same process on iPadOS if you have an Apple tablet. (Image credit: Apple)

It’s not an obvious setting, so you’ll be forgiven for having missed this. Go to your device’s Clock app, and tap the Timers setting. I’m sure you’ll have used this for other things, such as cooking or as a reminder to do something.

Tap on 'When Timer Ends' and scroll all the way down to the bottom past all the ringtone options, and you’ll see 'Stop Playing' is listed.

Tap this and when your Timer ends, your Netflix show (or other streaming service) will stop, and your iPad/iPhone will lock. You’ll need to tap 'Set' the first time you do it – you’ll know if you’ve done it right as when you go back to the main timer screen, it will say 'Stop Playing' next to 'When Timer Ends' now.

Depending on how sleepy I am, I set the timer for anything between 5 and 20 minutes – I’ve usually got a pretty good idea of how long I’ll need. Then, the next day when I come back to watch/listen to the show again, I know I’ll only have a maximum of the timer setting to rewind to keep playing from where I left off.

Until I get a device which recognizes exactly when my eyes have closed, it’s the next best thing.

More timer tweaks

An iPad on a green and blue background showing setting a timer in the Clock app — (Image credit: Apple)

A few more timer tweaks can help make your life easier. A quick way to flip between different alarm lengths – say you want 5 minutes one night, 20 minutes another night, and 10 minutes on a different one – is to use the 'Recents'.

Scroll past the 'When Timer Ends' section and you should see a list of all your recently used alarms. Now you can simply tap on the one I want without having to adjust the timer at the top. Precious seconds saved!

This is also useful if you’re using the Timer for other things during the day, such as while cooking. I’ve labelled my Timers 'Bedtime' to make sure it’s got the 'Stop Playing' function set. You can set a Label when you’re originally making a timer, changing it from 'Timer' to whatever you like.

Control Center and Siri

Three iPhones on a green and blue background showing the process for setting a timer in Control Center — You can create a shortcut to your custom sleep timer settings in Control Center – it's the same process on iPadOS for iPads. (Image credit: Apple)

You can also make use of Control Center and Siri – the latter is quite useful if you need to stay hands free, perhaps if your iPad is resting on a cabinet just slightly out of reach.

For Control Center – which are the set of options that appear when you swipe down from the top right-hand corner – you can add a Timer control here. After you’ve swiped down, press and hold in an empty area of the screen and tap 'Add a control' and find Timer within the list of options.

Once it’s added you’ve got two options. Tap once and you’ll be taken to the regular Timer options, but you can also tap and hold the timer icon then swipe up and down on the screen to add or remove time – a bit like you do with adding or reducing torch brightness. Note, with this you must have already had your Timer setting to 'Stop Playing' before.

Finally, you can of course also use Siri. You’ll need to either hold down the Side/Home button or say, “Hey Siri” followed by, “set a 10 minute Sleep Timer” for the “Stop Playing” function to activate. Make sure you include the word “Sleep” before Timer, or you’ll get a rude awakening when it elapses.

Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button!

And of course you can also follow TechRadar on TikTok for news, reviews, unboxings in video form, and get regular updates from us on WhatsApp too.