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How to enable Night Shift in iOS 9.3

Apple wants to help you rest easy, even when you stay up late with your iPhone. Here's how to the new Night Shift mode.

Jason Cipriani Contributing Writer, ZDNet
Jason Cipriani is based out of beautiful Colorado and has been covering mobile technology news and reviewing the latest gadgets for the last six years. His work can also be found on sister site CNET in the How To section, as well as across several more online publications.
Sarah Mitroff Managing Editor
Sarah Mitroff is a Managing Editor for CNET, overseeing our health, fitness and wellness section. Throughout her career, she's written about mobile tech, consumer tech, business and startups for Wired, MacWorld, PCWorld, and VentureBeat.
Expertise Tech, Health, Lifestyle
Jason Cipriani
Sarah Mitroff
2 min read
Watch this: Turn on Night Shift in iOS 9.3

iOS 9.3 ushers in several big new features, including something that Apple hopes will help you sleep better.

Called Night Shift, this new tool aims to cut down on eye strain and sleeplessness you might get when you're tucked into bed with your iPhone or iPad. According to Apple (and many scientists), the bright blue light emitted by your iOS devices during the evening hours can keep you awake later than you want.

With Night Shift, you should be able to stay up browsing Instagram or playing games and still fall asleep without much issue. Here's how to use it.

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Screenshot by Sarah Mitroff/CNET


To turn on Night Shift, launch the Settings app then select Display & Brightness.

Select Night Shift to see all of your options. There's a switch to manually turn on the feature, or you can schedule it to run by toggling the Schedule switch and setting the time.

Using the slider, you can adjust how drastic the color change is, from Less Warm to More Warm. More Warm gives you a prominent orange-red hue, while Less Warm is a much more subtle orange effect.

The first few days when using the feature will undoubtedly feel unnatural, but as you adjust to the color change you begin to appreciate the subtle difference. Night Shift mode will support iPhones and iPads with 64-bit processors. That includes the iPad Pro, iPad Pro 9.7-inch, iPad Air, iPad Air 2, iPad Mini 2, iPad Mini 3, and iPhone 6 and newer.

Editors' note, March 21, 2016: This post has been updated to reflect the final version of iOS 9.3