iPhone Night Maps

I’ve been using a car holder to place my iPhone in view while driving, which allows me to use the GPS and mapping capabilities safely. Trying to eek out as much value as I can, ya know.

The only trouble is at night the maps can be very bright – even with the backlight turned down to its lowest settings. I’ve found a quick way to switch the screen to an inverted color scheme that is easy on the eyes at night.

  1. Visit Settings
  2. General
  3. Accessibility
  4. Triple-click Home
  5. Select Toggle White on Black

 

Now back out and run Maps

daymap

When you press the home key three times quickly, you’ll see this now:

nightmap

It’s not perfect, the color scheme isn’t a “night map” color scheme – it’s just an inverse of the original colors.

In fact, the screenshots I took of day and night were the same on the iPhone. I had to recreate the inverted image manually. This indicates to me that the inversion occurs in the display driver after the screen is rendered – not in each app. This is actually a good thing – it ensures all applications are treated equally. An important thing when accessibility is reason.