Different kind of sensor. In a gas dryer, the sensor senses when the ignitor is hot enough, and it opens the circuit to the ignitor and allows current to run through the gas valve coils. The sensor could go bad, but the ignitor would never heat, or get hot and not shut off.
Furnaces have Hot Surface Ignitors and usually a separate flame sensor, which senses flame through flame rectification to the ground. It’s common for sensors to get dirty, in which case the furnace will light and shutoff after 5 seconds as it’s not sensing a flame.
Here’s a dryer flame sensor:
Sometimes the sites that sell appliance parts have feedback from people with appliance issues. Here’s such a site, it may give you onsite to possible problems:
My gas furnace did this in February. It was my bad luck that it took them five days to locate a replacement for a bad ignitor. Then the gas dryer stopped working a couple of weeks later - belt broke, so a complete coincidence
Not yet. Repairman spoke with me Tuesday morning about coming by that evening. He was supposed to contact me that afternoon to let me know he was coming. Never heard from him.
We’ve just been air-drying clothes for the nonce. I will attempt to arrange a repair again, but will have to wait a bit. It would help a ton if I could get a firm repair cost up front and be able to budget accordingly, but that doesn’t seem to be possible. The gas repair knocked us for a loop as it was.