Here's how Apple’s new sleep-saving feature for the iPhone is going to work (AAPL)
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There’s an iPhone update coming soon that promises to improve how you sleep — particularly if you tend to look at your iPhone or iPad before you go to sleep.
In iOS 9.3, which is expected to release as a free over-the-air update to iPhone owners in the coming weeks, a new feature called “Night Shift” will change the colors on your device’s display depending on the time of day.
The idea of “Night Shift” reflects several recent studies that have shown that being exposed to blue light at night may make it harder to fall and stay asleep.
And so, when you toggle the “Night Shift” setting, the colors on your screen will appear “warmer,” showing more red and yellow hues, when it’s dark outside. And it’ll go back to its normal blue hue when the sun comes up the next day.
We’d been wondering how Apple would implement this feature, but one Reddit user discovered an interesting image on Apple Canada’s iOS 9.3 preview page. Take a look.
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Based on this image, it looks like you’ll be able to toggle Night Shift in the Control Center, which you can activate on any iPhone or iPad by swiping up from the bottom of the screen.
The small lamp shade icon appears to be designed for Night Shift. Toggling it either gives you warmer colors on your display for that particular session, or until the next morning.
There are more Night Shift settings in the Settings app: you can make your own Night Shift schedule, or you can go with Apple’s default which is turning Night Shift on at sunset and off at sunrise.
Worth noting: Since Apple Canada’s image only shows Night Shift working on the iPad, we have no idea where Apple plans to put that lamp shade button in the iPhone’s smaller Control Center. Perhaps they’ll squeeze it next to or under the brightness settings, or maybe they’ll add another icon to the row of quick toggle settings like Airplane Mode or Do Not Disturb.
Either way, expect to be able to access this new nifty feature quickly and easily.
iOS 9.3 is currently in beta. We’re expecting a few more beta releases until it’s finally ready for the public, which will probably be around late February or early March.
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