Have you ever had trouble going to sleep right after using your Mac? Or, maybe you've noticed that your eyes get tired after looking at your Mac for a long time? Well, that's because every screen emits blue lights, which can cause eye strain.

Blue light in itself isn't necessarily bad—it increases reaction times and elevates moods—but its prolonged exposure, especially at night, can take its toll on your eyes. So, in this guide, we will talk about the Night Shift feature on Mac, which you can use to filter and reduce the blue light.

What Is Night Shift, and Why Should You Use It?

With Night Shift, you can control the color temperature of your Mac screen and make it display warmer tones. This way, you can reduce eye strain and have a comfortable viewing experience at night. To enable the Night Shift feature, your Mac should be running macOS Sierra 10.12.4 or later.

Night Shift works automatically by using your computer's location and the time of the day. It reduces the blue lights with the warm display after sunset and returns to normal after sunrise.

Long exposure to blue lights from screens can cause premature aging and also affect your productivity due to poor sleep. Even though just reducing blue lights isn't enough, you should still enable Night Shift, especially if you often use your Mac before bedtime.

How to Use Night Shift to Suit Your Needs

Let's see how you can enable or disable Night Shift in macOS, tweak its color temperature, and schedule it.

Enabling/Disabling Night Shift on Mac

You can quickly enable and disable Night Shift using the Control Center in macOS. Go to Control Center > Display from the menu bar and click the Night Shift toggle to turn it on. To make this process easier next time, you can drag and drop the Display section to the menu bar.

Displays from Menu Bar

This way, you can directly click the Display button in the menu bar to enable or disable Night Shift on your Mac.

Night Shift turn on until sunrise option

Alternatively, you can turn on Night Shift by heading to System Preferences > Displays > Night Shift. Here, you can check the box next to Turn on until tomorrow if you want to enable the feature immediately. Similarly, to disable Night Shift, toggle the checkbox again.

Scheduling Night Shift in macOS

Night Shift scheduling

You can also set your Mac to automatically turn on/off Night Shift at a specific time. Go to System Preferences > Displays > Night Shift, then click the Schedule setting. In the dropdown, you will have three options:

  • Off: if you don't want to schedule Night Shift.
  • Custom: to select specific times for Night Shift to turn on and off.
  • Sunset to Sunrise: use Night Shift every night.

If you select the third option, you need to ensure that Location Services are turned on because Mac will use it to determine your time and automatically enable/disable Night Shift accordingly. Here's how you can do that:

  1. Go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy on your Mac and click on the Privacy tab.
  2. Here, you'll find Location Services at the top. Click on it and check the box next to Enable Location Services on the right.
  3. Now, at the bottom of the list of apps, you'll find System Services. Here, click Details.
  4. Now, make sure Time Zone & System Customization is checked and click on Done.

That's it. Your Mac is all set to use the Night Shift feature automatically.

Change the Color Temperature of Night Shift

Night Shift screen temperature slider

You can adjust the color temperature of the Night Shift to be more or less warm according to your preference. Go to System Preferences > Displays > Night Shift and then drag the Color Temperature slider towards Less warm or More warm.

Night Shift vs. Third-Party Apps

Before Apple introduced Night Shift win macOS, users relied on third-party apps to reduce blue lights—most popularly f.lux. It lets you specify color temperature in kelvins and offers a couple more features.

Even today, these apps work just fine, so you can use them if you like. However, Night Shift serves its purpose just right, and there's no need to go for alternatives when you have a neat built-in solution.

Stay Healthy With Night Shift!

The Night Shift feature in macOS helps you protect your eyes from blue light, which, though it doesn't eliminate all the risks to your eyes, still offers decent protection against eye strains and helps you sleep better.

If you use your iPhone to scroll through social media before bedtime, it'd be a great idea to turn on Night Shift on it as well. After all, your Mac's screen isn't the only thing that emits harmful blue light.