Red screen at night, brain's delight

Sleep is good for us; modern electronics can make our sleep worse.

Speaking of sleep, there's a randomized, double-blind, cross-over, placebo-controlled comparison study. The researchers found that blue light from smartphones at night decreases sleepiness and makes you worse at everything (paraphrasing).

This page describes a zero-effort, zero-cost method to make your sleep better with the iPhone you already own. No willpower required. Nothing to buy and no new apps to install. Everything is done using the features already on your iPhone.

We're going to create a custom "Night Mode" that suits your schedule. It's an automatic setting that will help you sleep better that you can set up in about 180 seconds. Let me change your (sleep) life.

Why Night Mode?

Night Mode is my term for a red-tinted phone screen that takes less effort to disengage from at night, is kinder to your eyes in low-light settings (like a dark bedroom), and provides a powerful cue that it's time to go to sleep.

With automatic red-tinting color filters on your device, you'll receive a cue—no matter what app you're in—that it's time to get ready to sleep. It will make phone use less bad for you at night. You will come to appreciate the red screen (seriously).

These subconscious associations are powerful. "Night Mode" has helped me and the people I care about, and I hope it helps you.

Are you in the 0.01% of people that are doing meaningful work on their iPhones shortly before bed? No problem. You can set your Wind down and Bedtime to when you want to notice that it's time to go to bed (more on this later).

Great sleep = greater days. Let's set this up.

What we're doing

This guide is written for iOS 18 (the current iOS version as of writing on November 9, 2025), but you can make your Night Mode on other versions of iOS; you might have slightly different menus or names for things, but I bet you can do this.

First, we'll set up a toggleable Color Filter in about six taps. This is the piece that actually changes the screen's color.

Then, we'll set up a Sleep Schedule (bedtimes + wake-up times). This schedule is tweakable day-to-day so you can adjust it; it's simpler and easier than manually creating and managing alarms, so try it out. If you don't want an actual alarm going off in the morning but still want the automatic color tinting, you can set that up too ("Clock" app > "Change" > under "Alarm Options", drag the Volume slider all the way to the left) .

The sleep schedule creates triggers you can use to do a wide variety of things, like open specific apps. We will be using them to toggle our color filters.

Our Night Mode is separate from Apple's built-in Night Shift; use Night Mode in addition to Night Shift. They don't interfere with each other. If you need to view a color-sensitive item while our color tint is active, you can quickly toggle off the Color Filters and still have Night Shift active with all of the color-preserving magic that Apple engineers have built in that feature for us.

Create the tint with Color Filters

1. Open the "Settings" app.
2. Tap "Accessibility".
3. Tap "Display & Text Size".
4. Tap "Color Filters (Off)".
5. Turn on Color Filters using the toggle.
6. Tap "Color Tint".
7. The "Hue" slider defaults to red. This is what we want.
8. Drag the "Intensity" slider about 7/8ths of the way to the right. You'll get used to it within two days, I promise.

Set up Sleep

1. Open the "Health" app.
2. Tap the "Browse" tab.
3. Tap "Add Schedule".
4. Create your sleep schedule.

Creating your sleep schedule will take you less than 90 seconds and is the longest single task of this entire guide. If you want better instructions, read Apple's official guide for doing this.

If you don't have a sleep schedule set up yet, try one where you go to sleep and wake up around the same time every day (within ~30 minutes), even on weekends. This makes it easier to fall asleep, easier to wake up, and easier to get out of bed.

Setting up a schedule in Sleep will also automate "Sleep Focus" on your phone. That means no buzzes or pings while you're sleeping. You can set up specific filters to allow apps or individuals to still notify if you're worried about missing something. It also creates "Wind Down", "Bedtime", and "Waking Up" triggers you can use system-wide via Automations.

Later, you can set up a dedicated Home Screen when you're in Sleep Focus, where you can put the apps you want to be using (and not the apps you don't want to be using) front and center.

Next, let's create the Automations that mean you never have to actively think about this again.

Create the Automations

1. Open the "Shortcuts" app.
2. Tap the "Automation" tab.
3. Tap the "+" in the upper-right corner.
4. Select "Sleep" under "Personal Automations".

We're going to make two automations here, one at a time. The first is for going to bed (turning on the red tint) and the second is waking up (turning off the red tint).

The action we'll trigger is a "New Blank Automation" with a single command, "Set Color Filters".

Automation: turn it on

"When" #1 is Wind Down Begins.

1. Select "Wind Down Begins", then select "Run Immediately" so that it triggers without asking you. Tap "Next" in the upper-right corner.
2. Tap "New Blank Automation" (a grey box).
3. Search for "Set Color Filters" in the search bar. (I type Colo; this is the only action that appears.)
4. Select "Set Color Filters".
5. Confirm the action is "Turn color filters On".
6. Tap "Done" in the upper-right corner.

After adding this automation, you should be back at the "Automation" tab's main screen, with the automation we just made listed there.

Automation: turn it off

It's time to add the second automation, which will turn the color filter off.

Repeat the steps to create a new automation from the "Automation" tab of the "Shortcuts" app:

1. Tap the "+" in the upper-right corner.
2. Select "Sleep" under "Personal Automations".

"When" #2 is When Waking Up. We'll perform the same steps to create this automation, but now we'll have it turn the filter off for us.

1. Select "When Waking Up", then select "Run Immediately" so that it triggers without asking you. Tap "Next" in the upper-right corner.
2. Tap "New Blank Automation" (a grey box).
3. Search for "Set Color Filters" in the search bar. (I type Colo; this is the only action that appears.)
4. Select "Set Color Filters".
5. Confirm the action is "Turn color filters Off".
6. Tap "Done" in the upper-right corner.

You're done! Congratulations. This is everything you need to enjoy better nights and mornings.

I recommend taking another 30 seconds to set up quick access to toggling the color filter. It's easy and convenient. Read on.

Bonus: Quick access to Color Filters

1. Swipe down from the upper-right corner of your screen.
2. Long/deep-press on an empty area in the background of the Control Center (or whatever it's called nowadays :)).
3. Tap "Add a Control".
4. Search for 'Color Filters' in the search bar.
5. Select "Color Filters".

You can put this shortcut wherever you'd like inside this menu.

This is a one-swipe, one-tap toggle for our red tint filter. I do not know of a way to set up multiple different Color Filter options/presets (e.g., black and white and red tint).

Bonus: More triggers

Sleep Mode also has a Bedtime trigger. You could use it instead of Wind Down Begins, or (as I do) as a redundant trigger behind Wind Down Begins in case you toggle it off.

Now do it everywhere

If you made it this far, you should know that this option is also available on your other Apple devices (macOS and iPadOS) through very similar mechanisms. Depending on your iCloud settings, your Automations could sync between your Apple devices.

Sleep well!