Night Shift, Dark Mode, Reduce White Point, and Zoom Low Light Filter help reduce the damaging effects on your body clock that bright iPhone and iPad screens have at night. But there’s another option in iOS and iPadOS that makes the whole screen red, and it’s useful for more than just nighttime viewing in bed.
The brightness slider, “White Point Reduction”and “Scale”dim the display, but Night Shift cancels blue light frequencies, resulting in an orange tint that can help you fall asleep more easily (although this is discussed ). Dark Mode switches all bright white colors to black or dark gray, which reduces eye strain.
Color Tint, a feature discussed below, applies a color filter to the entire screen, such as a pure red filter, which has its own set of benefits.
Red light is harder to see than other light frequencies, so it tricks our eyes into thinking it’s less bright than it actually is. This means you can look at a red screen in a dark room and your dilated pupils won’t have to adjust as much to the light. Also, when you take your eyes off the red screen, your eyes will adjust much faster to the darkness around you.
The hidden Apple Color Tint feature can be useful for using star chart apps for amateur astronomy, a quick look at your iPhone at the cinema, or just checking your device when you wake up in the middle of the night. You can even use your iPhone’s screen as a makeshift red-lens flashlight for the red-light-readable paper maps that are common in the military. And, as a reader pointed out, many animals can’t see red very well, so a red filter will allow you to use your iPhone or iPad while hunting at night.
Turn on the red tint
Just go to the “Color Filters”menu hidden in the settings to try out the hidden feature. On iOS 13, 14, and 15, and iPadOS 13, 14, and 15, go to Settings -> Accessibility. Then select Display and Text Size in the Vision group and open Color Filters. In iOS 12 and older, things are a little different:
- iOS 13-15: Settings -> Accessibility -> Text display and size -> Color filters
- iPadOS 13-15: Settings -> Accessibility -> Display & Text Size -> Color Filters.
- iOS 12 and older: Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> Display adaptations -> Color filters.
Then turn on the “Color Filters”switch and select “Color Tint”as the filter. The Intensity and Hue sliders need to be at the far right to get the full red screen effect, so move the controls over them if they aren’t already set.
You can’t capture the effect in screenshots (the image above is simulated to match the displayed color), but it’s certainly impressive. And since your iPhone or iPad now emits only red light, it will be much easier to use in dark environments to maintain night vision without damaging your eyes.
Add a label for the red tint (optional)
If you want to switch between your new red tint and your regular, bright, untinted screen, it would be pretty awkward to keep going into the Color Filters menu in Settings to turn the red filter on or off. To turn the red screen on or off faster, you have several options:
Accessibility shortcut
With the Accessibility Quick Access feature, you can triple-click the side button, home button, or top button on your iPhone or iPad to switch between the standard screen and the red tint. To set it up, go to the Accessibility Shortcut menu at the bottom of Accessibility settings. Select “Color Filters”from the list and you’re done.
- iOS 13-15: Settings -> Accessibility -> Accessibility shortcut
- iPadOS 13-15: Settings -> Accessibility -> Accessibility shortcut
- iOS 12 and older: Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> Accessibility shortcut
If you have enabled two or more options for the accessibility shortcut, such as “Color Tint with Magnifier”, “Voice Control”, “Smart Invert”, or “Zoom”, triple-clicking will bring up a menu where you need to select “Color Filters”from there. It’s a bit slower, but necessary if you like using a lot of those cool triple-click shortcuts.
Press “Back”(iPhone only)
If you don’t like triple tapping the iPhone’s side button or the Home button, you can use the Back feature instead. Go to “Settings”-> “Accessibility”-> “Touch”-> “Press back”. Then select “Double Tap”or “Triple Tap”and assign “Color Filters”to it. Whenever you double or triple tap the back of your iPhone, you turn the red screen filter on or off.
- iOS 14-15: Settings -> Accessibility -> Touch Screen -> Back.
Siri
You can also use Siri to toggle the red filter, but it only works on iOS 15 and iPadOS 15. Just say “Hey Siri, turn on color tint”to turn it on and “Hey Siri, turn off color tint”to turn it off it.. If you’re not using “Hey Siri,”press and hold the side button or the Home button and say a command without “Hey Siri.”Note that if you try to use Color Filters instead of Color Tone, Siri will try to apply it to your HomeKit accessories.
- iOS 15: “Hey Siri, turn color tint on/off”
- iPadOS 15: “Hey Siri, turn color tint on/off”
There are currently no actions in the Shortcuts app to toggle color filters or color tint, so you can’t make the home button pressed whenever you need a red filter. Hopefully this will come in a future iOS/iPadOS update.