The Night Shift feature has been in your iPhone and iPad since iOS 9, but what exactly does it do? In this article, we’ll show you how it works.
Night Shift on iOS: This is how it works
Night Shift is a feature of iOS that reduces the amount of blue light in the screen when the sun has set. Research has shown that blue light makes your brain think it is daytime, which can lead to sleep problems and a disturbed biological clock. In addition, warmer colors are more pleasant to look at when it is dark.
Once you’ve set Night Shift, iOS will gradually change the screen colors of your iPhone or iPad after the sun has set. In the beginning you experience this as an orange-yellow glow, but you will no longer notice the difference in the long term.
Set Night Shift
Setting up or scheduling Night Shift on your iPhone or iPad is easy. To do this, follow the step-by-step plan below.
- Open the Settings app and go to ‘Display and brightness’;
- Tap on ‘Night Shift’;
- Choose ‘Turn on manually until tomorrow’ to turn on Night Shift once, or turn the slider on at ‘Scheduled’ to turn it on automatically every day.
You can also turn Night Shift on and off from the Control Panel. Open it by swiping up, and long press on the brightness bar (or push harder with 3D Touch). Then tap the Night Shift button to turn the feature on until the next sunrise or sunset, depending on the time of day.
Color temperature
In the Night Shift screen in ‘Settings’ there is a slider with which you can set how drastically you want the effect to be set. By swiping to the left, the color temperature becomes cooler (with more blue light), while to the right gives less blue light. You can therefore adjust this to your own preferences.
Do you have an iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus or newer? Then you can also use the TrueTone option instead of Night Shift. With TrueTone, your iPhone uses the built-in color sensor to adjust the colors on your screen to the ambient light. If you are often in rooms with warm light in the evening, TrueTone automatically adjusts the colors of your screen to this. If you turn them both on, TrueTone will turn off when Night Shift turns on.
Also read: How to activate Night Shift on the Mac and adjust the settings