How to Automatically Enable or Disable Night Shift on iPhone or iPad at Sunset and Sunrise

BY Osas Obaizamomwan

Published 1 May 2016

Night Shift

Night Shift has become one of my favorites apps for iOS 9.3. If you have not read all about it already, then you may want to check this article out. Basically, Night Shift reduces the blue light emitted from your Apple Device, by altering the warmth of your display lighting. This is great for reading in dark rooms and the reduction in blue light emission has been proven to have health benefits for those with sleep deprivation and sensitive eyesight. 

Regardless of all that good stuff, Night Shift is super simple to use and can be enabled in Settings -> Display & Brightness -> Night Shift or from the Control Panel. Furthermore, you can schedule Night Shift to enable and disable itself according to your location’s sunrise and sunset. We’ll show you how to schedule your Night Shift and avoid any location based errors.

How to Automatically Enable/Disable Night Shift at Sunset and Sunrise

It is super simple to set a schedule for Night Shift to automatically enable and disable itself. All you need to do is go to Settings -> Display & Brightness -> Night Shift and enable the Schedule option. Below Scheduled you will see From and To, indicating the time when Night Shift will start (from) and when Night Shift will end (to).

Night Shift - Sunrise

Use the Color Temperature to increase/decrease the warmth of your screen. The warmer the temp the “dimmer” your screen will appear.

By default, Sunset and Sunrise will be enabled. You can also create your own schedule by choosing Custom Schedule and selecting your own time frames.

Night Shift Schedule

Now, if you do use the Sunrise/Sunset method there are a few things you’ll need to know. This means that your phone’s screen temperature will automatically dim based on the sunset and sunrise of your location. Of course, for this to work, you will need to have Locations Services enabled.

If you try to use the Sunrise/Sunset option and run into issues or the Sunrise/Sunset option isn’t even available, it is most likely due to a Location Services permissions issue. So, even if you have Location Services enabled, you’ll need to go a step deeper.

Go to Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> System Services (all the way at the bottom).

System services

Inside System Services, make sure that Setting Time Zone is enabled. This is necessary since, Night Shift would need to ping your current location in order to see when sunrise and sunset should be. Having “Setting Time Zone” enabled is most always useful for travel especially.

Time Zone

Let us know which scheduling option you prefer in the comment section.