Image credit: 9to5google/YouTube

No more rude awakenings or accidental rabbit-hole, auto-play binges as YouTube look to set to bring a sleep timer to their platform.

YouTube is a favourite for night-owls. Who hasn’t been there watching a video that caught our eye at 1AM. But for those who’ve been there, you also know the curse of the sleep-time viewing.

YouTube’s autoplay will keep on playing new videos until you stop it. If you’re unconscious, this can mean a rude awakening from a sudden loud ad/video, a dead battery on a mobile device, or a skewed recommendations from a watch history you didn’t choose.

Finally, YouTube are recognising this section of their audience. They’re testing a sleep timer with Premium subscribers that works on both mobile devices and on desktop. However, TVs aren’t currently included in the test.

YouTube is letting those lucky enough to test the feature set a timer of 10, 15, 20, 30, 45, or 60 minutes before playback will stop. Of course, you can also set the video to end after the current video has finished.

YouTube’s sleep timer is available for paying YouTube Premium subscribers until September 2nd. However, the feature is a simple yet effective one that is no doubt strongly desired, so we will likely see a wider launch soon. We don’t know whether further availability of the feature will keep it as a paying subscriber exclusive.

YouTube aptly summarise their feature, saying: “Sleep Timer lets you set a timer to automatically pause playback after a certain amount of time.”