The best sleep timer apps for Mac in 2026

Updated August 2026

For most people the answer is Sleep Timer ($2.99 one-time): it’s the only app here that fades volume before sleep and can pause Apple Music. Need different schedules on different days? Sleepr does that better. Want the smallest possible tool — Sleep Utility. Refuse to pay anything? pmset is already on your Mac.

Sleep Timer is our app — the comparison below sticks to verifiable facts.

“Not listed” means the developer doesn’t mention the feature on their site or App Store page as of August 2026.

One long-time favorite is missing from this table: Sleepytime, the $4.99 fade-out timer many of us used for years, hasn’t been updated since July 2020 — the listing is still up, but it’s effectively abandoned. We’ve covered what to use instead of Sleepytime separately.

Sleep Timer — best for falling asleep to music

Sleep Timer for Mac is the only app in this comparison that lists a volume fade: Sleep Fade gradually lowers your Mac’s volume as the timer runs out, and an optional setting pauses Apple Music before sleep, so a song never cuts off mid-note and playback doesn’t resume at full blast the next morning. You also get a desktop widget and — on macOS 26 and later — a Control Center control, plus a daily bedtime schedule. It’s $2.99, one-time. The honest limitations: the schedule is a single daily bedtime, not per-day weekly plans like Sleepr offers, and there’s no free version or trial — the closest you get is the Mac App Store’s standard refund process.

Sleepr — best for recurring schedules

Sleepr has the strongest scheduling of any app here: pick days, time and duration — “every weeknight at 11 PM” — and its timers survive app quits and even reboots. Four customizable one-click presets, Siri and Shortcuts support via App Intents, a menu bar progress ring, and translations into 11 languages round it out. It’s $4.99 one-time on the Mac App Store, with no subscription or account. The catches: it requires macOS 26 (Tahoe) or later, so Macs still on Sequoia or Sonoma can’t run it; the developer doesn’t list volume fade, widgets or music pausing; and at $4.99 with no trial mentioned, it’s the priciest pick in this roundup.

SleepBar — best if you want to try before you buy

SleepBar is the only paid app here you can genuinely test first: a 7-day free trial with no credit card, then $4.20 one-time — a license that covers 3 Macs with lifetime updates. It offers preset timers (15/30/60/120 minutes), custom durations, scheduling sleep at a specific time, a pre-sleep warning notification, and a useful choice between full system sleep and display-only sleep. It needs macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later. Two things to weigh: it’s distributed outside the Mac App Store (direct download), which some buyers prefer and others avoid, and the developer doesn’t list recurring weekly schedules, volume fade or widgets — scheduling appears to be for a set time rather than a repeating weekly plan.

Sleep Utility — best minimalist pick

At $1.99 one-time, Sleep Utility by Zetegy LLC is the cheapest paid option and the most focused: a tiny status bar utility where you type a duration in natural language — “90m” or “2.5h” — and your Mac sleeps when it hits zero. It can also restart, shut down or log out on a timer, which none of the others do, and it runs on macOS 14 or later. The flip side is that a countdown is essentially all it does: the developer doesn’t list schedules, widgets, volume fade or any music handling. If a bare, reliable timer is all you want and $1.99 is your budget, nothing here is leaner.

Built-in: pmset — best free option

Every Mac already ships with a sleep timer, no download required: type pmset sleepnow in Terminal for immediate sleep, or sudo pmset repeat sleep MTWRF 23:00:00 to sleep automatically every weeknight — and since macOS removed the old Energy Saver schedule interface from System Settings, the command line is the only built-in way to schedule sleep. It’s free, scriptable and dependable. The trade-offs are exactly what you’d expect: syntax you’ll forget by next month, admin rights for schedules, no widget, no warning before sleep, and no volume fade — whatever is playing stops abruptly the moment the Mac sleeps.

How to choose

• You fall asleep to music or podcasts. The fade is the feature that matters: sound drifting down beats sound snapping off. That’s the case Sleep Timer was built for, with the Apple Music pause as the finishing touch.
• You need different schedules on different days. Weeknights at 11, weekends off — that’s Sleepr’s home turf, provided your Mac runs macOS 26.
• You want to test before spending, or prefer buying outside the App Store. SleepBar’s 7-day trial makes it the zero-risk starting point.
• You put your Mac to sleep on a timer once a month. Don’t buy anything — pmset sleepnow is free and already installed. If Terminal isn’t your thing, Sleep Utility at $1.99 is the cheapest way to avoid it.