How to Invert the iPad or iPhone Screen to Make Reading at Night Easier on the Eyes

If you’re like me you end up reading a fair amount while laying in bed using an iOS device. If you read in the dark, you can give your eyes a rest by turning on a little known Accessibility feature that inverts the display of the iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to show white text against a black background rather than the default setting.

Inverting the screen colors basically reverses every screen color on the display to be it’s opposite. White becomes black, black becomes white, blue becomes orange, and so on. The net effect is sort of like a dark-mode or night-mode, since much of the iOS screen colors are bright, and by inverting them everything gets darker.

How to Enable Screen Inversion on iPhone or iPad with iOS 12, iOS 11, iOS 10, iOS 9, iOS 8

1. Open the “Settings” app
2. Tap “General”
3. Choose “Accessibility”
4. Tap on “Display Accommodations”
5. Tap on “Invert Colors” and set that to ON
6. Exit Settings when finished

The screen colors will immediately invert, changes are immediate.

How to Enable Screen Inversion on iPhone or iPad with iOS 7, iOS 6, iOS 5, and iOS 4

1. Tap on “Settings” app to open your iOS settings
2. Tap “General”
3. Choose “Accessibility”
4. Look for “White on Black” and drag the slider to “ON”
5. Exit Settings when finished

You will immediately see the change, which looks just like the screen shot above.

You can turn off Screen Invert at any time as well by going back to the Accessibility settings and reversing the setting change.

Screen Inversion has been around since at least iOS 4, and while it’s intended for those with vision issues it can also just be a great relief to those of us who read in the dark. It’s also kind of fun to try and play games with the screen inverted, or just to turn this on a friends iPhone as a prank.

I find this much easier to read with than just reducing the brightness, although it’s not quite as good as something like Flux for the desktop. Yes there’s an iOS version of Flux available, but it requires a jailbreak so that’s not a viable option for everyone.