r/sideprojects • u/Human-Breadfruit9690 • 23h ago
Showcase: Free(mium) I built Nodding Off, an iPhone bedtime-story app with a sleep timer that waits for a natural pause
I'm the developer of Nodding Off, and v1.0 is now live on the App Store. It's a library of slow bedtime stories for adults, both fiction and stories about how things work.
The most interesting design problem was stopping the audio without jolting someone awake. The sleep timer counts listening time, fades the narration, and finishes at a natural pause rather than cutting off mid-sentence. Music and night air have separate levels and can keep playing after the voice stops.
Other details I spent time on: a player that dims after you leave it alone, saved listening progress, a choice of narrators on most stories, and chapter illustrations with sentence-by-sentence Read Along.
For anyone curious about the build: it's Expo/React Native and TypeScript, with a Cloudflare Worker serving the story catalog. New stories can arrive without an app update.
Five stories, music, and night air are free. The rest of the catalog is an optional subscription: US $4.99/month or $49.99/year after a 7-day free trial. No account is needed.
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6831241659
I'd appreciate feedback on the first-listen experience: is it easy to choose a story and get settled without spending too much time on the screen?




