Fall Asleep to Any Podcast, Without Losing Your Place
Half Heard is a podcast player with a considered ending. Your show trails off into a steady, synthesised noise bed over about eight minutes, and in the morning a drift mark shows where you stopped listening.
If you fall asleep to podcasts, the ordinary sleep timer ends your night with a cut. Guess short and the show stops while you are still listening. Guess long and it plays on for an hour past you, and the morning finds you somewhere in a story you never heard.
Half Heard is a podcast player built around the ninety seconds where you stop being awake. When the listening time you chose runs out, the voice does not stop. Over about eight minutes it recedes, the high frequencies rolling off first, while a synthesised noise bed (brown, pink or white, generated on the phone and never a looped recording) holds perfectly steady underneath. The noise bed does not dip while the voice fades. That asymmetry is the product: nothing lurches, and there is no click of an episode ending to pull you back.
The drift mark
The moment the fade begins, Half Heard records where you were. In the morning a card shows the episode, the time you drifted, and where to pick the story back up. It is a record of where the fade began and nothing more: there is no microphone listening and no sleep tracking.
Promises, not settings
- No autoplay, anywhere. Nothing starts playing by itself, and the queue never advances on its own.
- Nothing ever resumes loud. After a phone call or a headphone hiccup, the night comes back quietly and ramps up. It never resumes at the level it left.
- The timer cannot reset. The night’s deadline is saved to disk when it begins and survives a force-quit. Extending adds time.
- No ads, no account, nothing leaves your phone. There is no analytics or tracking either. See the privacy page.
Built for the middle of the night
Shake the phone to extend the show without waking the screen. A Lock Screen control adds fifteen minutes. Siri and Shortcuts can start the trail-off from a Sleep Focus automation. Open the app in the evening and the newest episodes of your shows download ahead of time, so there is always something ready.
Half Heard is made by Victoria Garland Creative. For help, start at the support page; the app’s terms are on the terms page.
What it does
The trail-off: the voice recedes over about eight minutes while the noise bed holds steady underneath
The drift mark: where the fade began is saved, and a morning card shows where to pick the story back up
Noise on its own: white, pink or brown, generated on the phone, free at every colour
No autoplay, no ads, no account, and nothing leaves your phone
What it costs
Your first thirty nights include the full trail-off, free, with no account and no card. Nights, not days: the count only moves on a night that produced a drift mark. Prices are in USD, and the App Store sets the equivalent in your region.
Free
The full trail-off, every night, with no account and no card.
$44.99/year
New subscribers get one month free first, as Apple's introductory offer. It renews until you cancel in iOS Settings.
$6.99/month
The same features, billed monthly.
$99.99 once
A one-time purchase, not a subscription. It never renews. Family Sharing is not available.
FAQs
What happens after the first thirty nights?
The player stays free, and so do noise-only sessions. The trail-off steps back to a plain fade to silence with no noise bed under it, and listening up to 30 minutes a night. Half Heard Plus keeps the full trail-off. Your drift marks, morning cards and subscriptions stay on your phone either way.
Is the noise free?
Yes. Noise on its own, with no episode, is free in white, pink and brown, with no time limit and no metering, on every tier. Only the shape of the trail-off is held back once the free window is spent.
What is a drift mark?
The moment the fade begins, Half Heard records where you were in the episode. In the morning a card shows the episode, the time, and where to pick the story back up. If you extend the night during the fade, the mark is withdrawn, because you were plainly awake.
Does it track my sleep or make any claims about it?
No. It is audio engineering, not a treatment for anything, and it does not listen through the microphone or measure you. The drift mark records only where the fade began. If sleep is a struggle, that is a conversation for a doctor, not an app.
Does it stream, or need an account?
It needs no account and has no ads. Episodes are downloaded ahead of time and played from the phone, so nothing streams in the middle of the night. Your listening, settings and drift marks stay on the device unless you choose to export something.
What does it run on?
iPhone, on iOS 18 or later. There is no Android or iPad version.
