How to turn off Sleep Mode on the iPhone

If you take your phone to bed at night, you may be woken by phone calls and pings from incoming text messages. Plus, as notifications come in, your phone will wake up, and the bright screen will wake you from your slumber, disturbing your lucid dream where you are running about with no pants on. We’ll show you how to turn on and turn off Sleep Mode on the iPhone and manage your sleep schedules on your device. Sleep Mode can mean the difference between a good night’s rest and replying to your boss’s “urgent” email at 3.00 am.

How to turn on Sleep Mode on an iPhone

To turn on Sleep Mode on the iPhone, go to Settings > Focus. Select Sleep. If you have more than one Apple device, enable Share Across Devices. There’s no point silencing the iPhone during the night if your iPad is going to wake you up instead.

The following two screenshots will show you the various options available. First, select the people and apps that can either disturb you or not disturb you. For obvious reasons, it’s best to ban everyone and everything, but you may have your reasons to allow a certain person to be able to call you at any time. So configure that section according to your needs.

You can also choose a certain lock screen and home screen for Sleep Mode. This could be a dark wallpaper, for example. Then tap the Schedule section to set that up.

How to manage your sleep schedules in the Health app

Selecting the Schedule section will bring you to the Health app.

• Toggle on Schedule.
• Wind Down is optional, but if you want a “time to go to bed soon” reminder, you can set that.
• Tapping Schedule and Options will then bring you to Full Schedule. Toggle the first two options on.
• Under Additional Details, add your daily sleep goal. I aim for eight hours but set a minimum of six hours. Yours may vary. The other options in Additional Details are optional, but I recommend enabling them all.
• Under Full Schedule, tap Add Schedule. Add your times for going to bed and waking up and the days that should apply. You can set different schedules for different days. Also, decide if you want an alarm to sound at your wake-up time.

If you own an Apple Watch, you can track your sleep through your watch and get charging reminders before bed (usually an hour before.) I’ve found sleep data to be much more accurate through the Apple Watch, and the alarm and haptics on my wrist wake me up faster.

How to turn off Sleep Mode in the Control Center

Sleep Mode will automatically turn off when you reach your wake-up time set in the Health app. However, if you wake up early one morning, you can disable Sleep Mode yourself manually using Control Center.

• Swipe the iPhone screen down from the top-right to open Control Center.
• Tap the Sleep Mode icon (a green bed in a white circle.)
• Tap the white Sleep button, and it will go dark. Sleep Mode is now off, and you will receive your paused notifications from during the night.

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