Apple continues to tweak Night Shift before officially debuting in iOS 9.3
One of the best features in iOS 9.3, which is currently in beta testing, is the Night Shift feature.
If you haven’t heard about it, the mode will use your clock and iOS device’s location to determine when the sun has set. It will then shift the display colors to the warmer end of the spectrum to make it easier on your eyes. The display will return to normal in the morning.
It is designed to limit your exposure to bright blue light, which has been shown to affect circadian rhythms while also making it harder to sleep.
How it works
The new Night Shift toggle in the Control Center.
An easy way to manually activate Night Shift is using the new toggle switch on the Control Center. Selecting it will automatically turn the feature on at any time of the day.
More control is available in the Display and Brightness section in Settings. There, you can select whether it should activate automatically and what time it needs to turn on and off. Users can select from two different options – a custom schedule or to activate the feature from sunset to sunrise.
You can also select the color temperature of the screen from Less Warm to More Warm.
Some new changes
The Night Shift mode settings.
Apple has made a few changes to the feature in the most recent beta versions of the software, including iOS 9.3 beta 5 which was released earlier this week.
Most notably, the feature is now automatically disabled when using the battery-saving Low Power Mode.
In the Settings menu, you can now also select to automatically enable the feature until tomorrow.
I’ve been using the Night Shift mode on both my iPhone and iPad. And while I don’t know if it will change any of my sleep patterns, it definitely helps lessen my eye strain while looking at both screens.
Wrap-up
The software also features a number of improvements for the education market.
Credit: AppleOther big changes in iOS 9.3 are arriving for the education market. At least for schools, the Shared iPad mode will allow multi-user support.
Educators can also take advantage of the new Classroom app so they can launch everyone’s apps at the same time and then guide what the students are looking at on their iPads. Using AirPlay, teachers can also project a student’s work from a tablet onto the classroom television equipped with an Apple TV.
Apple also added features to the News, Notes, and Health apps along with CarPlay improvements. You can take a look at the complete roundup of changes on Apple’s preview site.
Along with iOS 9.3, Apple has also been beta testing WatchOS 2.2 and tvOS 9.2. All of the new software should officially arrive to the public in the coming weeks, likely after Apple’s reported special media event later this month.