There is no debate that long battery life is one of the primary things that Apple devices are known for, which plays an essential role in many users who require to use their devices for a long time during the day and prefer not to carry a charger with them choosing Apple products for their laptops and mobile phones.
That being said, even when using devices with long-lasting batteries, finding ways of minimizing battery drain as much as possible can become necessary in some cases, such as when you have a long day at work and need to use your device for a longer amount of time than usual.
In today’s article, we will be examining the two particular features that dynamically adjust how the screen of your Apple device looks, known as Night Shift and True Tone, in specific, and find out whether these changes to the screen slow the battery drain of your device down.
So, does activating the Night Shift and the True Tone features on Apple devices save battery?
Activating neither the Night Shift nor the True Tone features has any positive effect on saving the battery of your Apple devices, as these features merely adjust the screen’s color temperature, which, unlike brightness, isn’t a factor that has an impact on battery drain.
In the following sections, we will individually analyze the effects of Night Shift and True Tone on the battery of your Apple device in more detail, and discuss the differences between these two features.
Does Night Shift Save Battery on iPhone, iPad, and MacBook?
While the comfort that activating the Night Shift feature adds to using your Apple device, especially if you’re located in a room without too much lighting, is practically undeniable, its effect on the device’s battery drain is something many users wonder about.
Activating the Night Shift feature will neither have a negative nor positive effect on the battery drain of your Apple device, meaning that you can utilize it without any battery-related worry if it improves your screen viewing experience, but you shouldn’t expect any improvements to the battery life as a result.
Unlike auto-brightness, which dynamically adjusts the brightness level of your device’s screen, and as a result, has a direct impact on battery drain, the Night Shift feature shifts the colors on the screen without any change in brightness, meaning that its effect on battery drain isn’t much different than you viewing images that turn the pixels of your screen to different colors.
While activating the Night Shift feature does mean that your device will have to do extra work to adjust the screen’s color temperature dynamically, which technically means that more power will be used; the amount of power used for Night Shift is negligible, and as a result, won’t exactly result in a noticeably higher battery drain.
Does True Tone Save Battery on iPhone, iPad, and MacBook?
Another feature that feels like it could potentially have an impact on the battery life of your Apple device is True Tone, which is a technology that allows your device to display consistent colors regardless of the lighting situation.
Similar to the Night Shift feature, activating the True Tone feature won’t have either a positive or negative effect on the battery levels of your iPhone, iPad, or MacBook, meaning that you should only enable it if you will be directly benefiting from its primary purpose of improving colors, and not for the purposes of battery saving.
Since having the True Tone feature enabled on your device will cause your device to adjust the color temperature dynamically without affecting the brightness levels, just like Night Shift, there is no reason for the battery drain of your device to increase due to having True Tone active.
That being said, while there will naturally be processing costs involved with running True Tone work, which will cause your device to draw more power from the battery from a technical standpoint, the amount of power required for this task is negligible, meaning that there won’t be a noticeable impact on battery drain.
What Is the Difference Between Night Shift and True Tone?
Even though both Night Shift and True Tone perform the same action of dynamically altering the color temperature of your Apple device’s screen, they serve two entirely distinct purposes.
The Night Shift feature on your Apple device makes the color temperature of the screen warmer as it gets darker outside by using the time and geolocation data, with the purpose of making the screen easier on the eye when there isn’t a lot of natural light available.
On the other hand, the True Tone feature adjusts the color temperature of your Apple device’s screen by utilizing sensors that directly measure the level of ambient light in your surroundings, with the purpose of making images appear more natural.
While both of these features allow your device to alter the color temperature of its screen dynamically, we can say that Night Shift is for a smoother user experience, and True Tone is for a higher-quality image viewing experience.
Finally, it’s also worth mentioning that Night Shift will always override True Tone in scenarios where both of these features are involved, meaning that the screen’s color temperature will be determined solely by Night Shift whenever it’s a time of day that causes the feature to be active.
Conclusion
As both the Night Shift and the True Tone features directly impact the color temperature of your Apple device’s screen, the question of how these features affect the battery levels naturally comes to mind, especially considering that the screen is one of the largest sources of battery drain.
To summarize, you won’t notice any difference in battery drain with either Night Shift or True Tone active, as these features, technically speaking, don’t do anything other than change the color of the pixels on the screen.
On the other hand, a screen-related feature that can impact battery drain both positively and negatively, depending on the scenario, is auto-brightness, as higher brightness means more light, which means more power is going to the backlight.
Mark’s first real encounter with tech was when he had to format his computer with Windows 98 around the age of 6 to quickly get back to playing Heroes of Might and Magic III without having to send the computer in for a repair, which he strangely found to be rather enjoyable since it was a new challenge for him at the time.
While he has always been particularly interested in the software side of things, which eventually led to him becoming a software developer, he enjoys keeping up with the advancements in consumer electronics and smart home technology when he’s not busy coding.