How to Activate Night Shift on an iPhone

Written by Jack Lloyd

Last Updated: August 7, 2023 Tested

This wikiHow teaches you how to turn on Night Shift on your iPhone, as well as how to schedule Night Shift to automatically come on during certain hours of the day. Night Shift is a blue-light filter that helps prevent interruptions to your circadian rhythm at night, which can improve your sleep.

Method 1

Method 1 of 2:

Manually Enabling Night Shift

1
Open your iPhone's Control Center menu. Swipe up from the bottom of the screen to do so. You should see a series of boxes and icons appear on the screen.
- If the Control Center menu doesn't open, swipe up again.
- Depending on your iPhone's settings, you may have to unlock your iPhone in order to access the Control Center menu.
2
Long-press on the "Brightness" bar. It's a vertical bar with an image of a sun (a sphere with spokes) on it. Pressing firmly on it for a second will open the Brightness menu.
- On iPhones 6S and up, you'll use 3D touch to open this menu; this means that if you don't press hard enough, the Brightness menu won't open.
3
Tap Night Shift. It's a circle at the bottom of the screen. The circle will turn orange, signifying that Night Shift is on until midnight.
- If the Night Shift circle is already orange, Night Shift is currently activated and tapping the circle again will turn off Night Shift.
- Night Shift will turn off automatically at midnight. If you want Night Shift to activate and deactivate on a schedule instead, you can set up a Night Shift schedule.
Press the Home button twice to do so. Your iPhone will use Night Shift for your display until you either turn off Night Shift or reach midnight.

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Method 2

Method 2 of 2:

Scheduling Night Shift

Open your iPhone's
Settings. Tap the Settings app icon, which resembles a grey box with gears on it.
You'll find this option just below the General option near the top of the "Settings" page.
It's near the top of the page.
4
Tap the white "Scheduled" switch
. It's near the top of the page. Tapping it will cause it to turn green
which signifies that Night Shift is now scheduled.
- If this switch is already green, Night Shift is currently on a schedule.
This section appears beneath the "Scheduled" switch when turned on. Doing so opens a page with scheduling options.
6
Select a schedule option. Tap Sunset to Sunrise to allow your iPhone to enable Night Shift when the sun goes down and disable it at dawn, or tap Custom Schedule to set custom hours of use.
- To set custom hours of use on a custom schedule, tap Turn On At and select a time, then tap Turn Off At and select a time.
7
Tap
Night Shift. It's in the top-left corner of the screen. Doing so will save your changes and apply them. Your iPhone's Night Shift feature should now automatically activate and deactivate depending on your selected schedule.
- You can adjust the Night Shift depth of color by tapping and dragging the slider at the bottom of the "Night Shift" page left to decrease the warmth or right to increase the warmth.
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Question

How do I remove dark mode?

Community Answer

On iOS 10 -- swipe up and simply click night mode off. On iOS 11 -- it is a little less prominent; if you have 3D touch (iPhone 7 or later I believe), simply 3D touch on the control center's brightness setting. However, if like me you are not on an iPhone compatible with 3D touch, you can simply hold touch on the brightness setting and click on the symbol to activate night shift.

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Tips

You can also manually enable Night Shift from the "Night Shift" menu by tapping the white "Manually Enable Until Tomorrow" switch.

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To lower or increase the intensity of the Night Shift hue, tap and drag the "COLOR TEMPERATURE" slider on the "Night Shift" settings page left or right.

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