- Getting Started
- Customizing Your Home Screens
- Setting the Screen's Appearance, Brightness, Lock/Wake, Text, View, and Wallpaper Options
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Setting the Screen’s Appearance, Brightness, Lock/Wake, Text, View, and Wallpaper Options
There are a number of settings you can configure to suit your viewing preferences and how your iPhone locks/wakes:
Appearance—Your iPhone has a Light or Dark mode. In the Light mode, the screen’s background is bright, and the text is dark. The Dark mode “inverts” the screen so the background is dark and the text is light. You can switch modes manually and set a schedule so your phone changes modes automatically.
Brightness—Because you continually look at your iPhone’s screen, it should be the right brightness level for your eyes. However, the screen is also a large user of battery power, so the dimmer an iPhone’s screen is, the longer its battery lasts. You should find a good balance between viewing comfort and battery life.
True Tone—This feature attempts to adjust the display so that colors appear the same despite changes to the ambient light around the phone.
Night Shift—This feature changes the color profile of the screen after dark. It’s supposed to make the light produced by the iPhone more suitable to darker conditions. You can set the color temperature to your preferences and can set a schedule if you want Night Shift to be activated automatically.
Auto-Lock—The Auto-Lock setting causes your iPhone to lock and go to sleep after a specific amount of inactivity. This is good for security as it is less likely someone can pick up and use your phone if you let it sit for a while. It also extends battery life because it puts the iPhone to sleep when you aren’t using it.
Raise to Wake—This setting enables you to wake up the iPhone by lifting it. This is useful because you don’t even need to touch the screen or press a button, just lift the phone and you see the Lock screen, giving you quick access to the current time, the Audio Player, notifications, and widgets. However, some people find this feature more annoying than helpful so if the phone waking when you lift it bothers you, disable this setting on your phone.
Text Size/Bold—As you use your iPhone, you’ll be constantly working with text, so it’s important to configure the text size to meet your preferences. You can use the Bold setting to bold text to make it easier to read.
View—Some non-X models offer two views. The Standard view maximizes screen space and the Zoomed view makes things on the screen larger, making them easier to see, but less content fits on the screen. You can choose the view that works best for you. (X models don’t have this option.)
Wallpaper—Wallpaper is the image you see “behind” the icons on your Home screens. Because you see this image so often, you might as well have an image that you want to see or that you believe makes using the Home screens easier and faster. You can use the iPhone’s default wallpaper images, or you can use any photo available on your iPhone. You also can set the wallpaper you see on the iPhone’s Lock screen (you can use the same image as on the Home screens or a different one). Although it doesn’t affect productivity or usability of the iPhone very much, choosing your own wallpaper to see in the background of the Home and Lock screens makes your iPhone more personal to you and is just plain fun.
Configuring Light and Dark Modes Using the Settings App
To configure the Appearance mode your iPhone uses, perform the following steps:
In the Settings app, tap Display & Brightness.
Tap Light to use the Light mode or Dark to use the Dark Mode.
To have your iPhone automatically change modes, set Automatic to on (green). The default setting is to have your iPhone in Light mode until sunset at which time it changes to Dark mode. At sunrise, it changes back to Light mode. If you don’t want this change to happen automatically, set Automatic to off (white) and skip the rest of these steps.
To change the schedule for the automatic mode change, tap Options.
Tap Custom Schedule.
Tap Light Appearance.
Swipe up or down on the hour, minute, and AM/PM columns to set the time at which your iPhone should switch into Light mode.
Tap Dark Appearance and use the hour, minute, and AM/PM columns to set the time at which your iPhone switches into Dark mode.
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Setting Screen Brightness, True Tone, and Night Shift Using the Settings App
To set the screen brightness and Night Shift, perform the following steps:
- In the Settings app, tap Display & Brightness.
- Drag the slider to the right to raise the brightness or to the left to lower it. A brighter screen uses more battery power but is easier to see.
- If you don’t want the True Tone feature to be active, set the True Tone switch to off (white).
- To use True Tone, set the True Tone switch to on (green).
- Tap Night Shift.
- To have Night Shift activate automatically, set the Scheduled switch to on (green); if you don’t want it to activate automatically, skip to step 13.
- Tap the From/To setting.
- To have Night Shift on between sunset and sunrise, tap Sunset to Sunrise and skip to step 12.
To set a custom schedule for Night Shift, tap Custom Schedule.
Tap Turn On At and swipe up or down on the hour, minute, and AM/PM wheels to set the time when you want Night Shift to activate.
Tap Turn Off At and use the time wheels to set when you want Night Shift to turn off.
Tap Night Shift.
To manually turn Night Shift on at any time, set the Manually Enable Until Tomorrow switch to on (green). Night Shift activates and remains on until sunrise when it shuts off automatically. (You can manually turn off Night Shift by setting the Manually Enable Until Tomorrow switch to off [white]).
Drag the COLOR TEMPERATURE slider to the right to make the Night Shift effect more pronounced or to the left to make it less pronounced. If Night Shift isn’t active when you drag the slider, it goes into effect as you move the slider so you can see the effect of the temperature you select.
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Setting the Appearance, Screen Brightness, and Night Shift Using the Control Center
You can use the Control Center to quickly configure your iPhone’s screen as follows:
- Open the Control Center by swiping down from the upper-right corner of the screen (X models) or swiping up from the bottom of the screen (non-X models).
- Swipe up or down on the Brightness slider to increase or decrease the brightness, respectively.
- To access more controls, press and hold on the Brightness slider.
- Use the Brightness slider to change the screen’s brightness (this does the same thing as using the slider on the Control Center, but it’s larger here, so it’s a bit easier to use).
- To enable or disable True Tone, tap True Tone. The current status is indicated under the icon so you know when it’s on or off. The icon is blue when True Tone is on and black when it’s off.
- Tap Night Shift to turn Night Shift on. When on, the Night Shift icon is orange.
- Tap Night Shift to turn Night Shift off. When off, the Night Shift icon is black.
- Tap Appearance to change modes. You see the current status of the Dark mode under the icon and the icon itself reflects the mode. When Dark mode is off, the icon is mostly dark; when Dark mode is on, the icon is mostly light (which seems backward to me).
- Tap outside the tools to return to the Control Center.
- Tap on any area on the background of the Control Center to close it.
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Setting Auto-Lock and Raise to Wake
To configure Auto-Lock or Raise to Wake, perform the following steps:
- Open the Display & Brightness settings screen.
- Tap Auto-Lock.
- Tap the amount of idle time you want to pass before the iPhone automatically locks and goes to sleep. You can choose from 30 seconds or 1 to 5 minutes; choose Never if you want to only manually lock your iPhone. I recommend that you keep Auto-Lock set to a relatively small value to conserve your iPhone’s battery and to make it more secure. Of course, the shorter you set this time to be, the more frequently you have to unlock your iPhone.
- Tap Back (<).
- If you want to be able to wake your phone by lifting it, set the Raise to Wake switch to on (green); to disable this feature, set the switch to off (white).
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Setting Text Size and Bold
To change the text size or make all text bold, perform the following steps:
- Open the Display & Brightness settings screen.
- Tap Text Size. This control changes the size of text in all the apps that support the iPhone’s Dynamic Type feature.
- Drag the slider to the right to increase the size of text or to the left to decrease it. As you move the slider, the text at the top of the screen resizes so you can see the effect of the change you are making.
- When you’re happy with the size of the text, tap Back (<).
- If you want to make all of the text on your iPhone bold, set the Bold Text switch to on (green).
- To remove the bold on text, set the Bold Text switch to off (white).
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Setting Text Size Using the Control Center
To change the text size with the Control Center, perform the following steps:
- Open the Control Center by swiping down from the upper-right corner of the screen (X models) or swiping up from the bottom of the screen (non-X models).
- Tap the Text Size icon. (If you don’t see this icon, you need to add it to the Control Center. See Chapter 6 for details.)
- Tap above the shaded area to increase the text size.
- Tap below the shaded area to decrease the text size.
- Tap outside the tool to return to the Control Center.
- Tap on any area on the background of the Control Center to close it.
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Choosing a View
Some iPhone models (such as the iPhone 8 Plus) enable you to choose between a Standard or Zoomed view. To configure the view you use, perform the following steps:
- In the Settings app, tap Display & Brightness to open the Display & Brightness settings screen.
- Tap View; if you don’t see this option, your iPhone doesn’t support it and you can skip the rest of these steps.
- Compare the two screens; the images on the screens change so you see examples of how various types of information will appear in each view. The images are representations and don’t show any detail so it can be hard to see the difference between the two views. The best way to decide is to try each view and see which one you prefer.
- Tap the View you want to use.
- Tap Set. (If Set is in gray, you’re already using that view and you can skip the rest of these steps.)
- Tap Use Zoomed or Use Standard. The iPhone restarts. When it starts up, you see your iPhone in the selected view.
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Setting the Wallpaper on the Home and Lock Screens
To configure your wallpaper, perform the following steps:
- In the Settings app, tap Wallpaper. You see the current wallpaper set for the Lock and Home screens.
- If you want your wallpaper to darken when your iPhone is in Dark mode, set the Dark Appearance Dims Wallpaper to on (green).
- Tap Choose a New Wallpaper. The Choose screen has two sections. The top section enables you to choose one of the default wallpaper images (Dynamic, Stills, or Live), whereas the lower section shows you the photos available on your iPhone. If you don’t have any photos stored on your iPhone, you can choose only from the default images. To choose a default image, continue with step 4; to use one of your photos as wallpaper, skip to step 9.
- Tap Dynamic if you want to use dynamic wallpaper, Stills if you want to use a static image, or Live if you want to use a Live Photo. These steps show selecting the Stills option, but using a dynamic image or Live Photo is similar.
- Swipe up and down the screen to browse the images available to you.
- Tap the image you want to use as wallpaper.
- Tap Perspective to use the Perspective view of the wallpaper; when the Perspective option is disabled, there is a slash through its icon.
- Tap Set and move to step 16.
- To use a photo as wallpaper, swipe up the screen to browse the sources of photos available to you; these include All Photos, Favorites, Selfies, albums, and so on. (To learn how to work with the photos on your iPhone, see Chapter 16, “Viewing and Editing Photos and Video with the Photos App.”)
- Tap the source containing the photo you want to use.
- Swipe up and down the selected source to browse its photos.
- Tap the photo you want to use. (If the photo is not currently stored on your iPhone, it downloads, which can take a few seconds.) The photo appears and you can resize and move the image around the screen.
- Use your fingers to unpinch to zoom in or pinch to zoom out, and hold down and drag the photo around the screen until it appears how you want the wallpaper to look.
- Tap Perspective to use the Perspective view of the wallpaper; if you selected a Live Photo, tap Live Photo to enable or disable its motion.
Tap Set.
Tap Set Lock Screen or Set Home Screen to apply the wallpaper to only one of those screens; tap Set Both to apply the same wallpaper in both locations. The next time you move to the screen you selected, you see the wallpaper you chose.
If you set the wallpaper in only one location, tap Choose (not shown on a figure) to move back to the Choose screen and repeat steps 3–16 to set the wallpaper for the other location.
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