Night Shift not warm enough? What to do, step by step

Night Shift works, and it is the right first step. This guide starts by making sure you have all of it, then covers what to do when all of it is not enough.

Step 1: push Night Shift all the way

1. Open System Settings, Displays, and click Night Shift.
2. Set Schedule to Sunset to Sunrise, or turn on “Turn on until tomorrow” to try it now.
3. Drag Color temperature all the way to More Warm.

That is as warm as Night Shift goes. Apple does not publish a kelvin figure; independent measurements put More Warm around 2700 to 3000K, about a tungsten bulb. On our 14-inch M5 Pro, macOS 27.2, on 29 October 2026, it was a mild orange and never red. There is no hidden setting beyond the slider.

Step 2: check whether a dark room is the real problem

If the screen looks fine at 19:00 and too bright at 23:00, color is only half of it. Night Shift does not dim. The brightness keys stop at the panel’s lowest backlight step, which is still bright in a dark room. System Settings, Accessibility, Display, Reduce white point goes a little lower for free. Going darker still, on a schedule, is covered in the guide to a screen darker than the minimum.

Step 3: go warmer than Night Shift with Atapa

Atapa is our app. It is $12 once for all of your own Macs, with a 14-day trial that asks for no card.

1. Download Atapa and open it. Setup asks one question: when do you usually go to bed? The default is 23:00.
2. Pick an intensity in the popover: Gentle ends the night at 1900K, Warm at 1200K, Deep red at 500K. Warm is the default. All three are warmer than Night Shift’s More Warm.
3. Leave it. Warming starts 30 minutes before sunset, the deepest stop comes an hour before your bedtime, and daylight is back by wake-up.

To see tonight’s deepest stop right now, click Wind down. Hold ⌥⌘T to see true color for a moment. ⌃⌥⌘⌫ resets everything.

What each stop looks like

Simulated with Atapa’s own color math, on a P3 panel model, at 100% brightness. The last column is Atapa’s estimate of melanopic light against an untouched screen; the method is on the science page.

Simulated with Atapa’s own color math.

Simulated with Atapa’s own color math.

If you are on an M5 Pro or M5 Max

Night Shift still works on these Macs. f.lux and other apps that tint through a gamma table do not: macOS accepts the table and never applies it (an Apple bug, still open on macOS 27.2 as of 26 October 2026). On our M5 Pro on 29 October 2026, f.lux 42.2 said it was on and the panel did not change, Sundown 1.6.4 showed its own notice that warming is not available on this Mac yet, and Atapa went to 500K. Atapa tints in the display pipeline, not through the gamma table. The one-minute check and the sources are on the M5 page.

Keep Night Shift on or off?

Either. Atapa does not switch Night Shift off, and it shows a tip in Settings, Comfort, Prompts and tips, when both are on. If you let Atapa run the evening, Night Shift adds nothing at the deep stops and you can leave its schedule as it was.

Readable red, not just red

A plain red filter switches blue and green off, so links and icons go black. Below 1500K Atapa folds those channels into red instead, so at 500K a blue link is still a visible darker red and the text is sharp. If you want the plain filter, Settings, Comfort, Red style offers Pure red. The details and the numbers are on the Readable red page.

After the trial

Atapa never stops working. Days 1 to 14 are the trial. Days 15 to 28 are the full app with a banner. From day 29 without a key, warmth stops at 2700K, about Night Shift’s warmest, while dimming, the evening curve and Shortcuts keep working. Deep red needs a licence, $12 once for all of your own Macs. Intel Macs are not supported in 1.0.