We’ve all been there before. It’s late, and it’s dark, but you still have to get a few more things to get done. You set your iPhone’s screen to its lowest possible brightness via Control Center, and you quickly realize that even at the lowest setting, the screen is way too bright for your eyes in such a dark environment.
What can you do in a situation like this? You could jailbreak and install a jailbreak tweak like Dim, but that’s not always an option, nor is it always desirable.
Fortunately, there is a way to quickly adjust screen brightness levels even lower than what’s possible via Control Center’s brightness slider. By leveraging some of iOS’ built-in accessibility features, you can set your iPhone’s screen brightness levels much lower than you think.
Step 1: Open Settings → General → Accessibility
Step 2: Tap Zoom → and enable the Zoom switch
Step 3: Triple-tap the screen with three fingers to invoke the overlay
Step 4: Tap Full Screen Zoom
Step 5: Slide the zoom slider all the way to the left to zoom out completely
Step 6: Tap Choose Filter → Low Light
Step 7: Tap on a portion of the screen to dismiss the overlay
Step 8: Go to Settings → General → Accessibility → Accessibility Shortcut and tap Zoom
Step 9: Triple click on the Home button to switch between lower brightness and normal brightness
You can now use this triple-click gesture to quickly switch between brightness levels on your iPhone. You’ll notice that you can make the screen significantly dimmer with the shortcut enabled. In fact, if you enable the shortcut while in a bright room, the screen becomes almost unreadable.
Needless to say, this is a great way to save your eyes when using your iPhone in a dark environment. It’s also handy when you wish to quickly switch between two differing brightness levels on the fly without invoking Control Center.
Yes, quite a few steps are required to get this set up, but once it is, you’re pretty much set going forward. As someone who’s been using this method since I willingly relinquished my iPhone 6s jailbreak last month, take my word for it when I say it’s well worth the time investment.
