A:Answer Generally, you don't cook things in a crockpot on high longer than 6 hours and when cooking on low, most recipes call for 8 - 10 hours. It isn't very common to have a recipe on low for 4 hours so I think that must be why they made it this way. When I do need to cook something on low for 6 hours, I set my oven timer. Not ideal, but I love how well this particular crock pot cooks, I just deal with it.