Feature request: automatically extend sleep timer

  • Unknown's avatar
    kellymichaelwong · Member ·

    Hi there! I’ve recently moved over to Pocket Casts from Castro (RIP). I’d love to request a feature that was the main reason for me using Castro.

    I fall asleep to podcasts. Can you add the ability to automatically extend the sleep timer? After I run out of time and it stops playing, I’d love to just press play again on my Airpods without needing to turn over and open up my phone to set a new sleep timer.

    Ideally this would be able to trigger for a couple hours after the sleep timer goes off, so that if I wake up midway through the night I can just hit play and it’ll only resume for a short while longer as I fall back to sleep.

    And while I’m here (can’t hurt to ask?) I’d love to see an indicator of whether I’m in “sleep timer mode” or not on the iOS Lock Screen. Castro displayed something like that under the episode name, where the authors are listed.

    Thank you! I’ve only been using Pocket Casts for a short while, but already I’m loving what I see. Castro closing shop may have been a blessing in disguise :)

  • Unknown's avatar
    kellymichaelwong · Member ·

    Now I’m getting greedy, but I just found a couple more features on another app (Podcast Republic) that are tied into this. They have the ability to schedule when a sleep timer is on (ie any time between 11pm and 6am). And they also offer the feature of fading the volume as the sleep timer nears the end of its time! Love that idea.

    The UI of the Podcast Republic app, though, leaves a lot to be desired. I would rather use yours than theirs.

    Thanks again for considering :)

  • yaelirub · Staff ·

    Hey there Kelly,

    Thanks so much for this feedback. I will share this back with the team so we can prioritize adding these features.

    In the meantime, we are interested in chatting with people who recently switched to Pocket Casts from Castro. We would love to ask you some questions about your experience! In return, we will give you a 50% discount on your first year of Plus.

    If you are open to it, could you please reach out to us at (email visible only to moderators and staff) ?

  • Unknown's avatar
    kellymichaelwong · Member ·

    Amazing! I’m thrilled to hear it :) thank you!

    I’ve sent an email back to the address you listed. Cheers!

  • Unknown's avatar
    timob3401da0115 · Member ·

    I’m another user who has been forced to migrate from Castro and found it incredible how unique their sleep timer extension functionality was (liked its look and feel too). It seems so obvious: just tap your earphones (Powerbeats Pro in my case) when the sleep timer comes to an end for another five minutes. It’s true that a fadeout of sound would also be nice, although Castro didn’t provide this.

    The best I have been able to manage so far is to create a Shortcut to extend the timer on PC by 5 minutes and trigger it from the Action button on my iPhone 15 Pro Max; but that is not available to everyone and requires me to wake up just a bit more to be able to reach out to the bedside table and do it.

    Please tell me your developers are working on something like this!

    Happy to give further feedback on the shift from Castro to Pocket Casts.

  • staff-joey8 · Staff ·

    Thanks for the great feedback, @timob3401da0115!

    I’ve relayed it to my team so that they can consider making these adjustments. It is much appreciated!

  • Unknown's avatar
    kenrgoss · Member ·

    I recently switch to this app from another app and this is my most missed feature. I want to enable the sleep timer and have it stay on or restart by default with the previously set time until I turn it off.

    I’d be happy to assist with the code myself if that is permissible and the developers are too busy on other features. This seems like a fairly trivial edit. Just keep track on a bit from the settings where we could set whether we want the sleep timer behavior pocketcasts current has, or a new mode of “manual” sleep timer. Then wherever you’re tracking the auto reset for the sleep timer, turn off the sleep timer if time_since_last_play_event > 5minutes AND NOT manual_sleep_timer_set.

    We’re about 9 months in on this feature request. Folk make babies in that time. Can we get this feature?

  • staff-fred · Staff ·

    @kenrgoss Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!

    I’d be happy to assist with the code myself if that is permissible and the developers are too busy on other features.

    Pocket Casts mobile apps are now open source! If you haven’t done so, please check out our repositories here: Pocket Casts iOS and Pocket Casts Android. 

    Thank you for your contribution!

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