iOS 9.3 beta 5 disables Night Shift mode when your iPhone is in Low Power Mode

iOS 9.3 Night Shift mode teaser 001

Along with the latest betas of watchOS, tvOS and OS X, Apple yesterday seeded a fifth beta of the upcoming iOS 9.3 software update to its registered developers. The new beta appears to pack in a few interesting changes as Apple continues to refine the experience ahead of the software’s public release.

Night Shift mode, one of the headline new features in iOS 9.3, has been tweaked again in the latest beta and now permits users to manually enable the feature until tomorrow within Settings, and the feature is now automatically disabled in Low Power Mode.

Available in Settings → Display & Brightness → Night Shift section, there’s a new switch labeled “Manually Enable Until Tomorrow” which does just that. In addition, Night Shift mode is now disabled when your iPhone is in Low Power Mode, which will grey out Night Shift toggles in Control Center and Settings.

In prior beta, enabling Low Power Mode automatically disabled Night Shift Mode to preserve the battery, but you could still manually re-enable Night Shift Mode. In beta 5, Night Shift Mode can no longer be used when the iPhone is in Low Power Mode.

iOS 9.3 beta 5 Night Shift mode enable until tomorrow

In addition, tapping the Night Shift icon in Control Center now brings up a dialog with the option to turn the feature on until specific time. The exact cut-off time when iOS will disable Night Shift Mode is based on your custom schedule: sunset, sunrise or a specific time.

iOS 9.3 beta 5 Night Shift mode enable until tomorrow iPod touch screenshot 001

Previously, toggling the Night Shift Mode switch in Control Center gave you different choices: Turn On For Now and Turn On Until Tomorrow. And as evidenced on the screenshot below, which was taken on an iPhone running iOS 9.3 beta 4, the option to enable Night Shift Mode until tomorrow in Settings wasn’t present in prior iOS 9.3 betas.

display-and-brightness-night-shift.png

As you can see, Apple’s also refined design of the Color Temperature slider, which no longer has the blue and orange dot next to the Cooler and Warmer thresholds and now reads “Less Warm” and “More Warm” instead of “Cooler” and “Warmer” like before.

Finally, the feature’s description has changed so iOS now informs you that “warmer temperatures can reduce eye strain” whereas the wording in beta 4 simply stated that ”warmer settings may affect the appearance of onscreen motion”.