One of the things I’ve often wanted in some of my music apps is the ability to put them to sleep using the built in sleep timer. I’ve been waiting for Apple to release a public API to harness the timer in the Clock app. It appears they have, just not many developers know about it or use it. One of the best music apps, Pandora, does. From their FAQ:

How do I put Pandora to sleep after a certain interval of time?

To do this, exit Pandora and enter the native iPhone “Clock” app. Touch the “Timer” option in the lower left corner. Set the amount of time you want Pandora to play, then set the “When Timer Ends” option to “Sleep iPod” and touch the green “Start” button. Choose the desired Pandora station and leave it playing. Pandora will shut off when the specified interval is up.

I tested some other apps to see if they harnessed this API as well and it appears they don’t. Last.fm will shut off when the timer is done but then it will start right back up. Same thing with the Sirius XM app. The AOL Radio app hasn’t been updated in forever so I didn’t even try that one (which is a shame, it is a good app). I’m not sure why more developers aren’t using this. Do they even know about it? It should be noted that I tried searching for the API in the docs and could not find it but this was the first time I’ve ever even looked at the docs so I wasn’t sure what I was looking for.