I started doing this when I went away to college. I think it was some mix of not having parents to tell me to go to sleep, feeling like I needed to reclaim some time for myself when the rest of my day was so busy, and maybe being a bit lonely far away from home.

I almost exclusively watch HS BG. It’s the right level of enough stuff happening that it occupies my mind while I’m conscious but it’s not something I care about missing any of it and they’re generally chill enough to not overexcite me or shock me awake. Plus they usually have on some generic chill music in the background.

I set a timer to shut off my tablet after an hour and with only a few exceptions I don’t ever stay awake long enough to see it shut off.

Regrettably my tinnitus requires me to have some kind of sound going. I also like having flickering light, so I tend to just put on TV shows I have seen many times. Like Supernatural or Star Trek.

I tend to go for story-telling podcasts, and within those I gravitate towards Twilight Zone/Outer Limits/Black Mirror style weird anthologies.

Right now I’m finding a lot of great stuff in:

• The Other Stories (all kinds of stuff, they have a different theme every month or so)
• The Wrong Station (similar, but less likely to stick to a theme for a while)
• Gray Matter (lots of modern adaptations of older horror/sci-fi, like Lovecraft)
• The Antiquarium of Sinister Happenings (higher ratio of dumb stuff, but still some gems)
• The Program (Black Mirror-esque)
• The Truth (various radio plays. Many aren’t sci-fi, but still weird in some way. Kind of reminds me of the bits of Inside No. 9 I’ve seen.)

I’ve been rewatching DS9 at night and falling asleep to that.

Yep, lately it’s been Max Richter 's album Sleep.

Supplemented with eye mask, melatonin, and an attempt to keep bedtime and wake up hours very consistent. When I can’t sleep, sometimes the last resort is to go sleep somewhere else, like the living room couch or the guest bedroom. For some reason, that can break me out of the rut and fall asleep.

Lately I’ve been watching Noel Phillips videos on YouTube. He’s an airline geek (as am I) and has been to some really unique places - some are interesting places on different continent, some just random remote airports in the middle of American nowhere.

I love listening to college lectures for topics I’m interested in but don’t fully grok. I fell asleep in them back when I was paying for it and getting tested on the material. Now I can listen to the same lecture 50 times if I want. And no test.

An all time favorite: Lenny Susskind’s Stanford open lecture series on Quantum Mechanics

Down side: sometimes I dream that I am trying to ask a question and the lecturer never notices. I have literally in the dream started running around terrorizing the room going insane screaming why does this professor not acknowledge my existence?!

Doubly hurtful when it’s Lenny; he’s such a comforting father-figure

There’s a dude on YouTube that repairs old cameras, hour long videos that I try to pay attention to but always puts me in that state where I can feel myself falling asleep, and my eyes won’t stay open.

If you don’t mind unsettling/horror/sci fi stuff, I recommend Exploring Series on YouTube. I find their voice just that right level of interesting enough to listen to the actual info if I want to, but calm enough to fall asleep to as well.

They have a few Lovecraft book readings as well, but I usually just binge the SCP Foundation recordings, haha.

Sleep With Me and Sleep Magic podcasts are great. Both have interesting enough content to listen to, but designed to make you sleepy. Also they talk like normal people. I can’t stand the ones where people are using their “sleepy ASMR voice.”

All the This Week in Tech (TWIT) podcasts are also really good, and long so good to fall asleep to. Also good if you can’t fall asleep since they’re pretty interesting.

Darknet Diaries is a good one - great stories.

Paper books with nightlights, or ebooks on low light level.

Reduced sensory input works like a charm.

Listening to podcasts also helps me immensely to fall asleep. But it’s difficult to find content that is not too boring and not too interesting.

My favorites are (and I doubt it would work for you looking at your preferred content)

• behind the bastard
• imaginary worlds
• darknet diaries
• build for tomorrow

Can only judge for the first 10 minutes of each episode because success.

I’m more low-tech, i set my mobile to minimum volume and use some equalizer app to reduce volume even more. Then i put the speaker right next to my ear… need to upgrade on this :-)

I don’t, but I do have a mask and that helps a lot!

I know some people use gameplay videos as background noise to fall asleep, someone I follow made a Sniper Elite video where he quietly narrates invasion mode for an hour and a half

I used to fall asleep a couple of audio books. The Winds of War, The Stand or The Wheel of time. I found the narrators of those books voices very soothing.

I made my self stop though, I wanted to reduce the amount of stuff I needed to fall asleep.

I typically need something familiar to listen to in order to fall asleep. I doubt it would work for you, but for me personally, Alpharad among us vods work great. I envy you, as a single person it’s very difficult early in a relationship to navigate these things