How to schedule Night Shift on macOS

There’s a consensus that too much screen time is bad for you but it’s hard to get away from screens. If you aren’t looking at your phone, you’re probably on your desktop and not everyone has the option to simply turn it off and take a break. One recent method to lighten the load of constantly staring at a screen is to tint it a warmer color. This method was first introduced by an app named Flux but on macOS it’s now a feature called Night Shift. You can schedule Night Shift on macOS just like you can on iOS. Here’s how.

Schedule Night Shift

Night Shift was introduced in macOS Sierra so you must be running at least that version of the OS.

Open the System Preferences app and go to the Display preferences. You will see a Night Shift tab. Select it.

how to schedule night shift on macos How to schedule Night Shift on macOS

By default Night Shift is turned off. To turn it on per a schedule, open the ‘Schedule’ dropdown.

how to schedule night shift on macos 1 How to schedule Night Shift on macOS

There are two ways to schedule Night Shift. You can schedule it to work with the sunrise and sunset times for your location, or you can set a custom schedule.

The sunrise/sunset schedule enables Night Shift on macOS when the sunsets in your area and turns it off when the sunrises. This means that as soon as it’s evening, your screen will be tinted a warmer color. When it’s morning, the screen will be returned to its natural blue.

The custom schedule allows you to set the start and end time for Night Shift to whatever you like. It isn’t bound to sunset/sunrise. You can set it to be enabled for any period of time.

how to schedule night shift on macos 2 How to schedule Night Shift on macOS

Once you’ve enabled Night Shift on macOS either via the custom or the Sunset to Sunrise option, you can change how warm your screen gets when it’s enabled. Use the ‘Colour Temperature’ slider to set it to a warmer or cooler color.

We should mention that the screen tint does not have an impact on screenshots. If you take a screenshots often and are worried the orange tint of Night Shift will have an impact on them, don’t be. The screenshots all come out looking as though there is no tint whatsoever. The previous screenshot was taken with Night Shift turned on and there’s no orange in it.

If you’re on a much older version of macOS, one that doesn’t have Night Shift, consider using the popular Flux app. It’s also a good idea to consider upgrading to the latest version of macOS.

If you’re on Windows 10, there’s a similar feature built into it. Linux users can also tint their screens a warmer color.

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