- Getting Started
- Customizing Your Home Screens
- Setting the Screen’s Brightness, Lock/Wake, Text, View, and Wallpaper Options
- Choosing the Sounds and Vibratory Feedback Your iPhone Uses
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Setting the Screen’s 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:
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.
Night Shift—This feature changes the color profile of the screen after dark. It is 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, available on iPhone 6s/6s Plus and later models, enables you to wake up the iPhone by lifting it up. This is useful because you don’t even need to 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 up 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 also 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—The iPhone 6 and later 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.
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 can also 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.
Setting the Screen Brightness 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 base brightness or to the left to lower it. A brighter screen uses more power but is easier to see.
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 11.
Tap the From/To setting.
To have Night Shift on between sunset and sunrise, tap Sunset to Sunrise and skip to step 10.
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 warm. 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 the temperature you select has.
Tap Back.
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Setting the Screen Brightness and Night Shift Using the Control Center
You can use the Control Center to quickly adjust brightness and Night Shift as follows:
Swipe up from the bottom of the Home screen (all models except the iPhone X) or swipe down from the upper-right corner of the screen (iPhone X, not shown in the figure) to open the Control Center.
Swipe up or down on the Brightness slider to increase or decrease the brightness, respectively.
To turn Night Shift on or off, 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 since it is larger here, it is a bit easier to use).
Tap the Night Shift icon to turn Night Shift on. When on, the Night Shift icon is orange.
Tap the Night Shift icon to turn Night Shift off. When off, the Night Shift icon is white.
Tap outside the tools to return to the Control Center.
Tap the downward-facing arrow at the top of the Control Center to close it.
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Setting Auto-Lock and Raise to Wake
To set Auto-lock and Raise to Wake, perform the following steps:
In the Settings app, tap Display & Brightness to 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:
In the Settings app, tap Display & Brightness to 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 are 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) and move to step 6. If you don’t want to bold the text, skip the next step.
Tap Continue. Your iPhone restarts. All the text is in bold, making it easier to read.
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Setting Text Size Using the Control Center
To change the text size with the Control Center, perform the following steps:
Swipe up from the bottom of the Home screen (all models except the iPhone X) or swipe down from the upper-right corner of the screen (iPhone X, not shown in the figure) to open the Control Center.
Tap the Text Size icon. (If you don’t see this icon, you need to add it to the Control Center. See Chapter 4, “Customizing How Your iPhone Works,” 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 the downward-facing arrow at the top of the Control Center to close it.
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Choosing a 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.
Tap Standard.
Look at the sample screen.
Swipe to the left or right to see examples of what other screens look like in the Standard view.
Look at the next sample screen.
Swipe to the left or right to see examples of what other screens look like in the Standard view.
Tap Zoomed. The sample screens change to reflect the Zoomed view.
Swipe to the left and right to preview the other sample screens in the Zoomed view.
If you want to keep the current view, tap Cancel and skip the rest of these steps.
To change the view, tap the view you want.
Tap Set (if Set is grayed out, the view you selected is already set and you can skip the rest of these steps).
Tap Use Zoomed (this is Use Standard if you are switching to the Standard view). Your iPhone restarts and uses the new 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.
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 nly choose from the default images. To choose a default image, continue with step 3; to use one of your photos as wallpaper, skip to step 8.
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 a Live Photo, but using a dynamic or still image 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, tap Still if you want a static version of the image, or tap Live Photo to use a Live Photo. (See the sidebar “More on View Options” for an explanation of these terms.)
Tap Set and move to step 15.
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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.
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. The photo appears on the Move and Scale screen, which you can use to resize and move the image around.
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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 (see the sidebar “More on View Options”), tap Still to use a static version of the image, or tap Live Photo to use a Live Photo (available only when you are working with a Live Photo on iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s Plus or later models).
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 3−15 to set the wallpaper for the other location.
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