How-To

Spotify Sleep Timer Not Working? Put Those Problems to Bed

By Adam Davidson

Published June 20, 2024

Waking up to find Spotify is still playing? Here’s what to try if you’re having problems with your Spotify sleep timer not working.

There’s nothing quite like falling asleep listening to music. The last thing you want when you wake up, however, is to discover that your phone battery is dead because it’s been playing music the whole time you’ve been asleep.

That’s where the Spotify sleep timer can come in handy. This useful feature lets you set Spotify to automatically stop playing after a set period that can be anywhere from five minutes to an hour, ensuring that Spotify will fall asleep not long after you do.

It’s also a useful feature if you like to fall asleep listening to podcasts or audiobooks on Spotify. By setting a sleep timer, you can ensure that you won’t have too much rewinding to do when you pick up the podcast or audiobook again the next day.

Sometimes, however, the sleep timer may stop working, which can be incredibly frustrating, and instead of Spotify helping you sleep, it might start giving you sleepless nights. Here’s what to try if you’re having problems with the Spotify sleep timer not working.

Check Your Internet Connection

Some of Spotify’s commands are processed on your device. However, many of them are processed on Spotify’s servers before the corresponding instruction is sent back to your Spotify app. This means that you if don’t have an internet connection, you may not be able to use many of Spotify’s functions.

Ensure that you have a good network connection by performing a quick web search in your browser. If you can, then the issue is elsewhere, but if you can’t then you’ll need to figure out the problem with your network connection. You may need to restart your device or your router to get things going again.

Check if Spotify is Down

If you have a good internet connection, then the issue may be at the other end. If Spotify’s servers are down, they won’t be able to process your requests, and this may interfere with the correct functioning of your Spotify sleep timer.

You can check the current status of Spotify’s servers using sites such as downdetector.com. If the servers are currently down, you may need to wait for them to come back online before you can get the Spotify sleep timer to work.

Ensure Casting is Off

Many users have reported issues with the sleep time in Spotify not working when they’ve been casting music from their phones to other speakers. It appears that the sleep timer may not always work properly when you’re casting. If this is the case, you can try connecting your phone directly to your Bluetooth speaker without using Spotify’s casting. If this doesn’t work, you’ll need to turn off casting through the Spotify app.

1. On the currently playing song or podcast, tap the Connect to a Device icon.
   
2. This may also look like a Speaker if you’re already casting to an external device.
   
3. Tap Current Device.
   
4. Ensure that your phone is selected as the audio output.

Sign Out of Spotify

If things go wrong with Spotify, you can try signing out of your Spotify account and then signing back in again. This may be enough to reset whatever was causing the issue and get your Spotify sleep timer back up and running again.

1. On the Spotify Home tab, tap your Profile icon in the top-left of the screen.
   
2. Select Settings & Privacy.
   
3. Scroll to the bottom of the screen and tap Log Out.
   
4. Once you’ve signed out, tap Log In or select one of the other sign-in options.
5. Once you’re signed back into your account, try the sleep timer again.

Update the Spotify App

If your Spotify app is out of date, it may be the reason that your sleep time isn’t working correctly. Try updating to the latest version of the Spotify app to see if this fixes the problem. You can update the Spotify app through the app store that you used to download it.

1. Open your app store of choice.
2. Search for Spotify.
3. Select the Spotify app from the results.
4. If the button says Update, tap it to update to the latest version of the app.
   
5. If the button says Open, then the app is already up to date.
   

How to Use the Sleep Timer in Spotify

Using the sleep timer in Spotify is simple to do. When you’re playing music, you can access the sleep timer in just a couple of taps and set it to stop your music after 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, 1 hour, or until Spotify reaches the End of the Track. If all works as expected, Spotify will automatically stop playing after the appropriate length of time.

1. Tap the currently playing song at the bottom of the screen.
   
2. In the top-right corner, tap the Three Dots icon.
   
3. Scroll down and tap Sleep Timer. This is often off the bottom of the screen until you scroll.
   
4. Select a period from the list of options.
   
5. You should see confirmation that your sleep timer is set.
   
6. After the selected length of time, Spotify should stop playing automatically.

How to Use the Sleep Timer in Spotify on Desktop

Bizarrely, it’s not possible to use the sleep timer in Spotify if you’re using the desktop app or using Spotify on the web. For reasons only known to Spotify, the sleep timer is only available within the Spotify mobile app.

If you were hoping to use the Spotify sleep time on your computer, unfortunately, you’re bang out of luck.

Fixing the Spotify Sleep Timer

Being able to fall asleep listening to music is lovely, so it’s useful to be able to automatically turn your music off after a set length of time so it doesn’t keep playing all night. If you’re having problems with the Spotify sleep timer not working, then you miss out on this otherwise great feature.

Hopefully one of the fixes above has helped you get the Spotify sleep timer up and running again. If you find any other useful fixes, please let us know in the comments.