A-B Repeat, Loop and Sleep Timer: Three Small Tools, Used Daily

Learning a dance step from a tutorial means watching the same eight seconds twenty times. Practising a song means repeating one verse. And falling asleep to a podcast means you want it to stop by itself. VideoPlayer has three small tools for exactly this: A-B repeat, loop, and a sleep timer.

How to use A-B repeat

1. Play to where the part starts and tap A-B repeat in the quick bar (or in the expanded row behind the arrow). That sets point A.
2. Play to where it ends and tap it again. That sets point B.
3. The part between A and B now repeats on its own, shown as a yellow band on the seek bar.
4. Tap a third time to turn A-B repeat off.

B must be at least half a second after A. Combine it with a slower playback speed to learn tricky passages.

Loop a video or a whole folder

The Loop button cycles through three modes:

• Loop this video — the current video plays again and again.
• Loop playlist — the whole folder plays and starts over (when there’s more than one video).
• Off — plays through once.

Shuffle sits next to it for a random order — useful for a folder of songs or short clips.

Sleep timer

Tap Sleep timer and choose 15, 30, 45, 60 or 90 minutes — or End of this video, which pauses when the current video finishes instead of moving to the next. The remaining time shows in the menu, and a short message confirms when it stops.

It pairs naturally with background play for podcasts and with Night Leveler for late films.

Where to find these buttons

All three live in the quick bar under the video title. If you don’t see them, tap the arrow at the end of the bar to show every action, or pin them permanently: arrow → Customise. See customising quick actions.

Ideas for A-B repeat

• Dance and fitness: loop one move at 0.75x until it’s in your body.
• Music practice: repeat a guitar solo or a raag phrase.
• Language learning: repeat one sentence and say it along with the actor.
• Exams: loop the one explanation you keep forgetting.
• Find it again later with a bookmark.

A-B repeat with slow speed: the practice combo

Looping is twice as useful when you slow it down. To learn a dance step, a guitar riff or a tricky line of a song:

1. Set A just before the part and B just after it.
2. Open playback speed and choose 0.75x or 0.5x. Voices and music keep their pitch, so it still sounds right.
3. Practise along with the loop until it feels easy, then step the speed back up to 1x.

Teachers use the same A-B repeat trick for pronunciation: loop one sentence, listen, repeat it aloud, and move on only when it sounds the same.

Musicians have long used a similar “A-B loop” on tape and CD players; Wikipedia’s page on loops in music covers the idea.

Frequently asked questions