How to make your Mac screen warmer at night

Turn on Night Shift

Night Shift is built into macOS. Apple explains it on its Night Shift support page. Here is how to find it:

1. Open the Apple menu and choose System Settings.
2. Click Displays.
3. Click Night Shift.

Apple notes that only some Macs support Night Shift. If you don't see the button, your Mac may not be one of them.

Set a schedule

In the Night Shift panel, pick a schedule. Sunset to Sunrise turns it on when the sun goes down where you are, and off when it comes up. Custom lets you pick the times yourself.

You can also turn it on by hand. It then stays on until sunrise or until your next scheduled time.

Choose how warm it gets

The Color Temperature slider sets how warm the screen gets while Night Shift is on. Apple says warmer settings show more yellow and less blue. Try it for a few evenings, and move it until it looks right in your room.

What Night Shift can't do

Night Shift is free and already on your Mac. For many people it is enough. It does have limits, though.

• It has one warmth setting for the whole night.
• It goes toward yellow. It has no mode that turns the screen red.
• In the day, the screen goes back to its normal colours.
• Apple says how it looks on an external display depends on the display.

Other apps that change screen colour

If you want more than one setting, there are Mac apps for it. f.lux, Iris and Shifty each change screen colour in their own way. Shifty is a menu bar app built around Night Shift. Look at each one and keep the one that fits how you work.

What Lumiv does

I made Lumiv because I wanted my screen to follow the sun without me touching a setting. It's a free menu bar app for the Mac. No ads, no subscription, no account.

It finds your location and works out your local sunrise and sunset. Then it changes the screen on its own. In the day it sets the screen to 5000K. At night it turns the screen deep red and removes blue light. That red is the part Night Shift doesn't have.

The change happens at sunrise and sunset, with no flicker and no bright flash. It works on every connected display at once, and it comes back after your Mac wakes or unlocks. It handles time zone changes, daylight saving and polar regions. If you want normal colours for a while, a manual override lasts until the next sunrise or sunset.

Lumiv changes colour temperature only. It doesn't touch brightness. Your location never leaves your Mac, and there is no tracking and no server. It's 0.6 MB, launches at login and needs macOS 14.6 or later.