PSA: The iPhone Has A Secret ‘Extra Dim’ Mode

The iPhone’s brightness doesn’t go low enough. In the pitch dark, even the dimmest setting can be too bright. But you can make the iPhone’s dimmest setting even dimmer, thanks to a tip from redditor manawesome326. We’ll take you through it step by step.

Go to the Settings app and search for “Reduce White Point”. Or hit General > Accessibility, scroll all the way down to Accessibility Shortcut, and check Reduce White Point. Now whenever you click your home button three times, your screen will dim, even if it’s already at the lowest brightness setting.

For finer tuning, you can find “Reduce White Point” under General > Accessibility > Display Accommodations. Toggle it on, and you’ll see a slider for how much you want to dim your screen.

If you already have a different function assigned to a home button triple-click, you can still add Reduce White Point. Then when you triple-click, iOS will ask you which function you want. Great news for those of us who already assigned the triple-click to switch to grayscale, or to lock someone into a single app while they borrow your phone.

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It’d be great if you could add a button to your control centre or home screen to go extra-dim. But there doesn’t seem to be any “Reduce White Point” action in the Shortcuts app. If you know any other easy ways to trigger the effect, let us know.

(There’s another, older way to enable the extra-dim setting in the Settings app, but it’s a longer workaround using the Zoom function, and it doesn’t work in the Shortcuts app either.)