System-wide Night/Red Mode on Apple Watch Ultra (beyond just the watch face)

Question

Level 1

12 points

System-wide Night/Red Mode on Apple Watch Ultra (beyond just the watch face)

Hi everyone,

I’m using an Apple Watch Ultra and I’m trying to solve a problem that I think others may run into as well:

Right now, “Night Mode” / red mode is limited to specific watch faces (e.g. Wayfinder, Modular Ultra). As soon as you open most apps, notifications, menus, or settings, the watch goes back to bright white/colored UI. That defeats the purpose in a lot of real-world low-light scenarios and makes a lots of features unusable there.

Concrete issues:

Using the watch at night (bedroom, cinema, with a sleeping partner): opening a notification or app blasts full brightness colors.
Astronomy, camping, tactical/field use: preserving night vision requires keeping everything red, not just the watch face.
Aviation, photography, observatories, etc.: many environments explicitly prefer or require low-impact red lighting.

What would solve this:

A system-wide “Night / Red Mode” toggle:

- Accessible via Control Center and/or Focus.
Applies to:
- - System UI
  - Notifications
Apple apps
Ideal: an API so third-party apps can respect it.

At minimum:

- Option to force a monochrome or low-impact color theme across the system while enabled.
- Ability to tie it to Focus modes (e.g. Sleep, Astronomy, etc.).

This is not just a cosmetic feature. It is a practical usability and accessibility improvement for people who use the Ultra in the environments it is marketed for.

If anyone has found better workarounds or if Apple is considering this, it would be helpful to know. For now, I wanted to clearly describe the gap: we have an excellent hardware platform and a good Night Mode on select faces, but no consistent system-wide solution.

Apple Watch Ultra

Posted on Nov 9, 2025 6:36 AM

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Answer 1

Nov 13, 2025 7:23 AM in response to polar_fox

That is a great idea!

But Readers here have no special inroads to Apple developers. You should try to post your suggestion on the feedback pages. (length limited, you may have to make it slightly more terse)

Product Feedback - Apple

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Answer 2

brbo

Level 8

38,539 points

Nov 12, 2025 8:43 PM in response to polar_fox

Hi polar_fox

and welcome to this Apple (user-to-user) Community!

Re: System-wide Night/Red Mode on Apple Watch Ultra (beyond just the watch face)

Sorry I don't have an Apple Watch Ultra handy in order to check this out completely.

There's a third-party (non-Apple) article that may be helpful :

https://www.simplymac.com/apple-watch/apple-watch-ultra-night-mode

For Theatre (Cinema) mode: There's a video online:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9EuAMYMpmY

Resource: Apple Watch User Guide - Apple Support

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Answer 3

polar_fox Author

Level 1

12 points

Nov 14, 2025 2:25 AM in response to brbo

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

I’m already using Night Mode on the supported watch faces, Theatre Mode, low brightness, etc. Those all help a bit, but they don’t address the core issue I described: as soon as you open most apps, notifications, or system menus, the UI jumps back to bright, full-color elements. In dark environments (bedroom, cockpit, observatory, cinema, etc.) that sudden flash is exactly what I’m trying to avoid.

What I’m looking for is not just a “keep the screen dim” option, but a system-wide visual mode (ideally red, or at least low-impact monochrome) that applies to:

System UI
Notifications
Apple apps
And ideally, third-party apps via an API

The current implementation of Night Mode on a few watch faces is great, but it’s scoped too narrowly to be usable in those real-world low-light scenarios.

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Answer 4

polar_fox Author

Level 1

12 points

Nov 14, 2025 2:27 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Thanks for taking the time to respond!

That is a good idea and I have already submitted this via Product Feedback (and I know others have done so over the past years as well). This thread is mainly meant to:

a) See if there is any lesser-known workaround (e.g. via Accessibility, Focus, Shortcuts, or a particular app combination) that gets closer to a truly system-wide solution on Apple Watch Ultra.

b) Clearly document the gap for anyone else looking for the same thing, so it’s visible that this isn’t just a cosmetic wish, but a practical usability/accessibility feature for the kinds of environments the Ultra is marketed for.

If anyone has found a configuration that keeps the entire watch experience “night-safe” (beyond just the watch face itself), I’d be very interested in concrete steps or setups. Otherwise, I hope Apple eventually extends Night/Red Mode to the whole system instead of just select faces.

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Answer 5

brbo

Level 8

38,539 points

Nov 14, 2025 3:50 PM in response to polar_fox

Thank you for your reply, for checking through those articles, and adding clarity about a feature beyond what its already available, that you are looking to implement, or have made available for those who would use it.

If the sought-for work-around is not forthcoming from the community, seems you have done the best you could to increase awareness of the need for "system-wide" night / red mode on Watch Ultra.

Thank you to Grant Bennet-Alder for joining the discussion, and for the excellent feedback suggestion.

All feedback is carefully read and logged. If others also send feedback / a feature request / now, to reach those who work on the software behind-the-scenes at Apple, we may see this feature introduced in a future update.

The more feedback Apple receives, the more likely we will see the feature. A link to this discussion could be included in the request.

Web-form for feedback: Feedback - Watch - Apple

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