Hidden iPhone Brightness Tweaks for a Better Night's Sleep

Sometimes you don’t even think about it. You get into bed, situate your pillows, sheets and blankets, or what have you, and reach for your iPhone for a quick scroll through TikTok or Bluesky. But it’s never quick, is it? That quick scroll becomes a doomscroll, and it’s easy to lose track of time. 

You’ve already heard that exposure to blue light before bedtime can make it harder to go to sleep. iOS has long had Night Shift to introduce a warmer tone to your iPhone’s display to offset the effects of blue light, but other factors that affect your sleep are also at play that the feature doesn’t quite address. But luckily, you can. 

While the newest iPhones can go as low as one nit of brightness, effectively turning your phone’s display down to an ultra-dim mode that’s not only helpful for battery but easier on your eyes in the dark. In addition to that, iOS itself has a few tweaks that can allow your display to dip down a bit dimmer than the standard brightness slider allows for. We’ll show you how below. 

For more tech tips, check out how to change (or remove) your iPhone’s lock screen controls and how to spice up your iPhone Messages in iOS 18. 

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Details

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1. First, enable Night Shift

The iPhone Night Shift setting automatically adjusts your display — using your phone’s internal clock and geolocation — to warmer colors that are easier on your eyes as the day progresses to night. Every morning, the display returns to its regular settings. You can turn it on in your Settings or via the Control Center.

While it may not be as effective we once believed it was as far as melatonin suppression, but Night Shift still provides benefits by lowering the blue light on the display and that’s definitely a good thing.

Method 1: Settings

Go to Settings > Display & Brightness > Night Shift. From here, you can either schedule the feature at a certain time or enable it for the entire day and have it disable in the morning. You can also adjust the color temperature by using the slider at the bottom of the page — you can choose between less warm and more warm.

Method 2: Control Center

Swipe down from the top-right to access the Control Center. Then press and hold the Brightness icon and tap the Night Shift button to turn it on and off.

2. Use this accessibility feature to reduce the display’s white point 

You can also reduce the white point on your iPhone to adjust how intensely colors show up on your screen. Bright colors are especially illuminated at night time, so try this setting to dull them a bit.

In Settings, go to Accessibility > Display & Text Size and toggle on Reduce White Point. A marker will appear under the setting, which you can use to adjust the intensity of bright colors to your liking.

3. Add a low light filter with the Zoom accessibility feature

If you’re only interested in dropping the brightness and don’t want warmer colors or less intense colors, you have a way to lower just the display brightness. Using the Zoom accessibility feature, you can add a low light filter over your display to make it darker than usual.

Launch the Settings application and go to Accessibility > Zoom and make sure that the Low Light option is chosen under Zoom Filter. If you’d like, you can toggle on the Zoom feature here, but the easier way is to triple-click the side button from anywhere on your phone to use Zoom.

When Zoom is enabled, your phone will automatically add the low light filter to your display, making it darker, even if your brightness is already at its lowest. A small floating circle will appear on your screen, indicating that Zoom is currently turned on. If you tap the controller, you can hide it. To disable Zoom, simply triple-click on the side button again.

Need more tech tips in your life? Don’t miss the 7 changes you need to on your iPhone as soon as you install iOS 18.