If you’ve ever wanted to show someone something from the display of your device without being in physical contact with them, then you might choose to capture a screenshot and send the resulting image to that person of choice. All iPhones and iPads support screenshot-taking, and if you’re familiar with the process, you should already know that iOS generates a bright white flash when the screenshot button sequence is invoked to simulate a camera flash.
It’s a nice touch to make the screenshot experience seem more realistic, but if you’re ever in a dark environment, such as peering at your phone while in bed, the bright white flash can be tear-jerkingly blinding. That’s why iOS developer XCXiao has released a new jailbreak tweak dubbed Smart Dark Flash.
Just as the name implies, Smart Dark Flash darkens the screenshot flash effect so that it doesn’t blind you in dark situations. The tweak intelligently monitors your handset’s sensors in the background to determine whether the flash needs to be suppressed or not, and it can even be programmed to work in tandem with iOS 13’s native dark mode.
As you might come to expect, extraneous use of any handset’s native sensors comes at a slight cost of battery life. On the other hand, users can fine-tune the tweak’s sensor-checking frequency to mitigate as much battery drain as possible. Users are also able to configure the flash color, sounds, and style to their liking.
Configuration can be done from the new preference pane that gets added to the Settings app after installation:
Here, you can:
- Toggle Smart Dark Flash on or off on demand
- Enable or disable automatic dark environment detection
- Configure an intensity of light threshold:
- 0 – Almost no light triggers the dark flash
- 5-10 – Dusk circumstances trigger the dark flash
- 10-50 – Cloudy day triggers the dark flash
- 20-100 – Office lighting environment triggers the dark flash
- 100-500 – A sunny day triggers the dark flash
- Set how often the tweak checks your iPhone’s sensors for ambient light
- Enable or disable dark mode detection for dark flash
- And more…
Given our late-night experiences with iOS’ native screenshot flash effect, Smart Dark Flash is a welcomed addition to the experience. Those who agree can purchase the tweak for $0.99 from the Packix repository in their package manager of choice. Smart Dark Flash supports jailbroken iOS 13 devices.
Will you be augmenting your iPhone’s screenshot experience with Smart Dark Flash? Discuss in the comments.