It’s 2am and you can’t sleep. Ideas for tomorrow’s meeting are running through your head. Have you made a mistake in your tax calculations? You reach for your iPhone and the bright light dazzles you. Your partner stirs. Quick, turn on night mode.
Many of us spend time on our iPhone and iPad in the small hours, so dark mode (reversing the colour palette to make backgrounds dark, or black, and text light) is becoming increasingly common. It’s been a hugely popular feature on the Mac with the Mojave update, for instance.
Within apps, small and mainstream developers alike are adding the feature – notably, YouTube has added a grey coloured dark theme, apparently due to high demand.

Night mode is popular for more than its nocturnal benefits. Some people prefer the aesthetics of dark backgrounds. Particularly on the screens of iPhone X, iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max, pitch black colour schemes give apps the appearance of floating.
Dark themes may also conserve battery life because they don’t require the display to be lit up at all in some areas. Great news if you’ve forgotten your charger on a weekend away.
If you like things darker in general on your iPhone (for whatever reason) you can turn on Smart Invert within the Accessibility settings on your device. Not all apps are optimised to cope with this setting, however, so some apps with their own dark modes are a delight. Here are some of the best – many of which have true OLED black options.
The writers
Pared-back note taking app Bear looks elegant in white, but also has a range of dramatic dark themes from greyscale Charcoal to deep black Dieci. Switching writing app iA Writer to its black Night Mode makes it perfect for tapping down sections of your book in the small hours. Why not switch the app icon to a dark theme, too?


The readers
With Feedly you can read news and articles from a huge range of sources of publications, blogs and more, all in one app. It allows you to switch theme from the main menu bar.
If you’re a Reddit reader then you’re in luck. The Reddit app has a grey night mode as well as the option to switch into an AMOLED Night pure black theme. You can set this to come on automatically when the sun sets.

The organisers
Comprehensive habit tracker HabitMinder has a pitch black dark mode for late-night logging of your steps or water intake. GoodTask is a great task manager and to-do list, which will keep track of all your ongoing projects. Switch on the Pure Black palette (one of several themes) when you need to add a task as you’re going to bed.


The entertainers
YouTube’s grey-coloured dark theme makes late-night viewing easier on the eyes. If you like your podcasts to come with aesthetic options Overcast has a Dark theme, which is grey, or an even more dramatic Black theme. Oh, and it’s also a really great all-round podcast player.

The tools
It won’t just be the Tydlig’s dark theme you will love when you remember that invoice at 3am. This calculator appmakes sorting the sums easier because you can edit mistakes and link calculations together.
Koins is a minimal currency converter whose dark background theme can be combined with a pitch black keypad (multiple colours are available) to make it easier on the eyes when you check the exchange rate on your midnight trip to the airport.
