How to Enable Night Shift on Mac for Better Sleep and Eye Comfort

Night Shift is a handy feature that changes the color palette of a device’s display to warmer tones, especially in the evening. This is to counteract the potentially sleep-disrupting effects of cooler, bluer artificial light emitted by screens. While Night Shift was initially introduced in iOS 9.3, it’s now available on macOS as well. In this guide, we’ll show you how to use Night Shift on your Mac.

Update Your Mac

Night Shift was added to the Sierra update of macOS, so make sure that your Mac is running on that version or later. If not, follow the necessary steps to update your macOS.

Enable Night Shift Manually

If you ever feel the need to take a break from the cool display or strain on your eyes, you can easily turn on Night Shift mode manually using different methods.

Notification Center

From the Notification Center sidebar, click the Night Shift toggle switch, and it will turn blue, indicating that your display is now sporting a warmer color palette.

Siri

If you’re already using Siri, you can quickly turn on and off Night Shift by invoking it and saying, “Turn on Night Shift” or “Turn off Night Shift.”

System Preferences

You can also enable Night Shift through System Preferences. Go to Displays and select Night Shift. Check the box that says “Turn on until tomorrow”, and the feature will stay on until 7:00 AM the next day.

Schedule Night Shift Automatically

You can set up Night Shift to automatically follow a schedule. To do this, go to System Preferences > Displays > Night Shift, and select the Sunset to Sunrise option or define your custom schedule by completing the From and To fields. The feature will then be enabled and disabled accordingly.

Adjust the Color Shift

Under the Night Shift preferences, you can also fine-tune how extreme the color shift should be. Use the slider labeled ‘Color Temperature’ to set your preferred color temperature, and your display will display a preview of the change as you drag the slider. Release the mouse button, and the display will slowly transition to the new setting.