A sleep timer is a countdown timer that stops whatever is playing once it completes the countdown. For example, if you set a 45 minute sleep timer and you're playing audio on your device, the audio will stop playing after 45 minutes.
On HomePod
You can just say
"Hey Siri, set a sleep timer for x minutes"
and it will stop playing when the timer runs out.
In iOS
The generic way to do this on iOS / iPadOS is to go to Clock ->Timers and for When Timer Ends, at the very bottom of all the sound options, select Stop Playing.
In iOS 17.1 you can now name timers and have a history of previous timers, so you could have different named sleep timers depending on how much time you want.
There are also app-specific timers, e.g. in Books you can click on the sleepy moon icon (a moon with zzz above it) to set a sleep timer, but I like using just the generic timer since it works across all applications (including video).
SIDEBAR: The missing feature of actually detecting sleep
Apple has an obvious missed opportunity for Watch integration, since your watch knows when you've fallen asleep (more or less). There should be a system-wide "stop playing when I fall asleep" option.
There is at least one app that does this. I haven't tried it, but it's called Sleep When I Sleep, from AppleVis.
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