The old Google Play Music feature is completely missing
Android is all too eager to help you play some music, but what do you do if you don’t want to keep it forever – whether you’re afraid you’re at risk of wandering or running away? You can use automation apps like Tasker or install a dedicated third-party app, but nothing beats a native sleep timer. YouTube Music could soon get just that, making it your ideal companion during breaks, workouts or when you just want to listen for that long.
The latest update to YouTube Music adds support for the new Android 13 media player. But in addition to visible changes like that, there’s also work on new functionality behind the scenes, and 9to5Google discovered some text while doing an APK teardown that could suggest a sleep timer feature is in the works.
res/layout/timer_status_bottom_sheet.xml
While that doesn’t give us much to work with, the filename there may refer to a sleep timer that arrived as part of the playback controls on the app as a bottom sheet. 9to5 speculates a bit about how the interface could appear, and that we can access it through an overflow menu, but we haven’t seen any real evidence one way or the other.
Some apparently related strings in the APK suggest that we will be able to interact with timers by adding five minutes to an active one or canceling it immediately.
<string name=”add_five_minutes”>five minutes</string>
<string name=”timer_cancel”>Cancel Timer</string>
Back in the day, Google Play Music showed a sleep timer, so that the music stopped automatically at a predetermined user-defined time. The option was available in the main settings menu, but was not the easiest to get and use. We hope YouTube Music’s eventual implementation is a bit more polished.
So far, none of this has been officially confirmed, and the implementation and specifics could change wildly before it arrives – assuming it ever does. If you need a sleep timer for your music right away, Spotify has one.
