AutoPause: Repeat Sleep Timer

Playface

About this app

Every sleep timer stops your audio once. AutoPause keeps doing it.

Set a timer and it stops your audiobook, podcast or music after that long, like any sleep timer. The difference is what happens next. Press play again and the timer is already back on. No reopening the app, no setting it again, no unlocking your phone.

THE 3AM PROBLEM

If you fall asleep to audio and wake through the night, you know the routine. Unlock the phone. Open the app. Press play. Set the sleep timer again, because it never remembers. By the time that's done the screen has woken you up properly and sleep is further away than when you started.

AutoPause removes it. The timer re-arms itself, every time, all night.

WITHOUT TOUCHING YOUR PHONE

Pair AutoPause with a physical play button and the phone can stay face down until morning. A cheap Bluetooth remote clipped to the bed works. So does a sleep headband with play and pause on the side, or earbuds with playback controls on them. Press the button, drift off, the audio stops itself. Press it again hours later and the timer is already waiting.

HOW IT WORKS

- Flip one toggle, or add the Quick Settings tile for one tap from anywhere
- Choose how long: 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 or 45 minutes, 1 hour, or 2 hours
- AutoPause watches for playback and starts the timer automatically
- When the timer runs out, the audio pauses
- Press play again and it starts over, no interaction needed
- Optionally set a time of night to stop entirely

Works with any app that plays audio: Audible, Spotify, YouTube Music, podcast apps, anything.

WHY IT EXISTS

I have ADHD and I can't fall asleep without an audiobook. Leaving it running all night is worse than silence, though. It works its way into the dream and wakes you up. So you set the sleep timer, and then you wake up and set it again. And again.

AutoPause records how many times playback restarts each night, which is how I know that for me it is five to eight. Every sleep timer I tried expected me to be awake enough to set it. This one doesn't.

BUILT FOR ONE THING

No accounts. No ads. No tracking, no analytics, no data collection of any kind. AutoPause has no internet permission at all, so it could not send your data anywhere even if it wanted to. It is a paid app and that is the whole business model.

The interface is deliberately plain and dim. It is a bedtime app.

A PASSION PROJECT

AutoPause is a passion project, not a big company's product. We answer messages as soon as we can, but there are not many of us, so please be patient.

What you get in exchange: we use this app ourselves every single night. Anything that stops working reliably is our problem before it is yours.

BEFORE YOU BUY

AutoPause works by running a foreground service that watches for media playback. It is built and tested nightly on Google Pixel phones.

Android manufacturers vary in how aggressively they shut down background services overnight to save battery, so on some phones you will need to exempt AutoPause from battery optimisation. The Setup tab links you straight to that setting. On some devices even that may not be enough to keep it alive until morning.

If it cannot survive the night on your phone, use Google Play's refund window.

What’s new

First release of AutoPause!