Night Shift

The new Night Shift feature in iOS 9.3 changes the color of your iPad and iPhone's screen to fit studies that show that a warmer display will make it easier for some people to get to sleep. You can try Night Shift with your iOS device if you read in bed at night to see if it helps you.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. On today's episode let's take a look at the new Night Shift feature available in iOS 9.3.
Night Shift is a new feature that will warm the colors on your iPad or iPhone. It will take away some of the blue light and move things towards warmer reds and yellows. The idea is that studies have shown that people that have too much blue light coming into their eyes just before they go to sleep have a little more trouble sleeping.
Now results are mixed. There have been apps out there and some other devices have had this functionality for awhile. Some people say it works and some people say it doesn't. So it's the kind of thing that is probably not going to cure your insomnia but it might just be a general good idea to have it built into your iOS device.
So let's look at how to use Night Shift on the iPad. I'm using the iPad Air 2 here and I'm going to go into Settings and then take a look at Display and Brightness. Then you can see Night Shift, right there. I'm going to tap on that and here's all the settings for Night Shift.
You can set it to be scheduled from a certain time to another time. So 10 p.m to 7 a.m. are the defaults. I can go ahead and change those. You can see I can Turn On App and Turn Off App at a certain time to fit my schedule. I can also just select Sunset to Sunrise and then it will automatically do it based on location.  So you can choose either one of those to automatically do it.
You can also manually turn it on. So if you want to see what it looks like and it's the middle of the day or perhaps it's a solar eclipse or something you want to just turn it on right now you can do that by tapping that switch. You can see now it's on.
Now once it's on you can adjust it to make it Less Warm which you can go all the way down to basically being off or More Warm all the way to the right. That setting will stay there as it goes on and off through the schedule that you've got.
Let's take it look at how it looks when you have it turned on. So let's go into Safari and I've got MacMost brought up here. We can easily test this out by instead of going back and forth between settings we can bring up the controls from the bottom, like that. We have a Night Shift button right here so I could turn it off and now it is back onto normal and turn it on again. So it is very easy to test it out and see what it looks like and compare.

Comments: 13 Responses to “Night Shift”

Wendy Farkas

9 years ago

I have iOS 9.3 but don't have Night Shift in my Display options. Might it be in an update?

Gary Rosenzweig

Wendy: Perhaps your iOS device is too old? What do you have?

Garry Gordon

I have OS9.3 on my iPhone, but cannot find Night Shift under Display and Brightness

Garry: Perhaps you have an older iPhone that isn't compatible? According to Apple's site: "Night Shift is available on iPhone 5s or later, iPad Pro, iPad Air or later, iPad mini 2 or later, and iPod touch (6th generation)."

Karlene Galway

I have an iPad2 and being older "Night Shift" did not happen in the update. I think this is a shame. I am 65, read at night and being a pensioner can't afford another iPad when the one I have works brilliantly still. Can apple do anything for the older appliances?

Karlene: I imagine that this feature is highly dependent on the graphics chips and screen resolution. The iPad 2 isn't even a Retina display so it makes sense that it isn't up to the task.

Shirl R Parker

Is this feature also available in OS 10.11.3 El Capitan? I usually use my iMac just before sleeping.

Shirl: No. This is an iOS feature. For Mac you can use third-party software to accomplish the same thing. Flux will do it: https://justgetflux.com

Ricardo Jr

NOW I learn that my "ancient" iPad 2 will not accept the Night Shift program. I have been using Uvex amber goggles for a year now. Use them for iPad, iMac and e-book reading at night.

Roger DeRose

I have an ipad 2or could have been call 3 with the Retina and iPhone 6 running the current iOS 9.3.1 Night shift does not appear under display and brightness

Roger: Should definitely work on your iPhone 6, but not your iPad 2 (or 3rd gen).

Lori

This was a long overdue move for Apple to do this however I'm curious why this isn't an option on my iMac? Or am I missing something?

Lori: Third-party apps that do this have been around on the Mac for a long time.

Comments Closed.

Night Shift

Comments: 13 Responses to “Night Shift”

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