True Tone on Mac: what it does and when to turn it off
True Tone shifts your Mac screen's white to match the light in the room. Which Macs have it, how to turn it on or off, and how it differs from Night Shift.
True Tone is a Mac display setting that uses a light sensor to adjust your screen's colors to the light around you, so white looks warmer under lamps and cooler in daylight, the way paper does. You turn it on or off in System Settings > Displays, or in Control Center under Display, on Macs and displays that support it.
Most people can leave it on. The main reason to turn it off is color work: if you edit photos, grade video or match colors for print or a brand, True Tone shifts what you see. Below: what it changes, which Macs have it, how to switch it, and how it differs from Night Shift, the setting it most often gets mixed up with.
What does True Tone do on a Mac?
Your eyes adjust to the color of the light in a room without you noticing. A sheet of paper looks white under a warm lamp and white in cool daylight, even though the light bouncing off it is quite different. A screen without True Tone shows the same fixed white everywhere, so in a lamp-lit room it can look stark and blue next to everything else on the desk.
True Tone reads the light around you through a sensor in the Mac or display and adjusts the screen to suit. Apple describes it as adjusting the color and intensity of the display to match the ambient light, so images look more natural. The change is gradual and subtle. Most people never see it happen, and only notice it when they switch True Tone off and the screen suddenly looks colder.
A few things it does not do:
- It doesn't replace your brightness control. Overall brightness still has its own slider and its own automatic setting, Automatically adjust brightness, which you turn on or off separately.
- It doesn't change your files. True Tone only changes how your display shows colors. The photos, documents and designs you save or send are untouched.
- It isn't a night mode. It works all day, following the light in the room, not the clock.
Which Macs have True Tone?
True Tone needs a display with the right kind of light sensor, so it depends on the screen as much as the Mac. In general:
- MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. Every model with Apple silicon has it, as do many of the later Intel models.
- iMac. The more recent models, including every iMac with Apple silicon.
- Apple's own displays. The Studio Display and Pro Display XDR support it.
- Desktop Macs without a screen (Mac mini, Mac Studio, Mac Pro). It comes down to the display you connect.
Most third-party monitors don't support True Tone. The surest check is the switch itself: if True Tone doesn't appear in System Settings > Displays for a display, that display doesn't have it.
How to turn True Tone on or off
In recent versions of macOS:
- Open System Settings from the Apple menu and click Displays in the sidebar.
- If you have more than one display, select the one you want at the top of the page.
- Turn the True Tone switch on or off.
The quicker route is Control Center. Click Control Center in the menu bar, click Display, and click True Tone, if your version of macOS shows it there. That is the handy way to turn it off for one editing session and back on afterwards.
On older versions of macOS, which have System Preferences instead of System Settings, the same option is a True Tone checkbox under Displays.
If you use a MacBook with an external monitor, you may see True Tone for the built-in screen and not for the monitor next to it. That is expected: it is set for each display that supports it.
When should you turn True Tone off?
Leave it on for everyday work. Turn it off when the exact color on screen matters.
- Editing photos or video. True Tone shifts the white balance you see, so a photo corrected under a warm lamp can come out too cold on everyone else's screen.
- Design and brand work. Picking colors, checking a logo or matching a print proof needs a screen that isn't adjusting itself to the room.
- Comparing screens. If you are checking how something looks on two displays, or against a printed sample, True Tone on one and not the other will mislead you.
- When you simply don't like it. Some people find the warm shift too yellow, especially in rooms with very warm light. That is a perfectly good reason.
Switch it back on when you are done. The common slip is to turn it off for one job and leave it off for a year. If color is your job rather than an occasional task, steady room lighting and a properly set up display matter more than any single switch, and True Tone off is only the first step.
True Tone vs Night Shift
Both make the screen warmer at times, which is why people confuse them. They do different jobs.
| True Tone | Night Shift | |
|---|---|---|
| What changes | The screen's color balance, to match the room | Colors shift toward the warm end |
| What drives it | A light sensor reading the room | A schedule, or sunset to sunrise |
| When it acts | All day, whenever the room's light changes | In the evening and overnight |
| What it's for | A screen that looks natural in any light | A warmer screen after dark |
You can have both on at once. In the evening, Night Shift warms the screen on top of whatever True Tone is doing. Automatically adjust brightness is a third, separate setting that changes how bright the screen is, not its color. Night Shift on Mac covers scheduling and what warmer colors can and can't do for sleep, and Mac screen brightness for eye comfort covers brightness and glare.
Is True Tone better for your eyes?
It is a comfort setting, not a health one. Many people find a screen that matches the room easier to look at for long stretches, because a blue-white rectangle in a warm room stands out. But there is no good evidence that True Tone protects your eyes or prevents eye strain, and it doesn't need to: the blue light from screens is not known to damage eyes. Do blue light glasses work? goes into what eye doctors say about that.
What eases tired eyes is the rest of the setup: brightness that roughly matches the room, no glare on the glass, text big enough to read without leaning in, and regular breaks to look into the distance. True Tone is a nice finish on top of those, not a replacement for any of them.
A nudge to soften the screen at night
One part of that setup drifts through the day. In the evening the room gets dimmer while the screen stays wherever you set it at noon. True Tone follows the color of the room and automatic brightness follows its light level, but neither of them knows it is getting late.
Notchpals does. Its characters take turns appearing at your Mac's notch, and the one in charge of your eyes makes a single visit late in the evening, after 9 PM, to ask you to dim the screen. Blip, the alien who starts in every crew, treats this as fresh news every single night:
BlipWarm colors at night? Your screen can change color? I love this planet!
Blip only asks. Notchpals never touches True Tone, Night Shift or your brightness, so the slider stays in your hands, and a Done tells Blip it's handled.
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