How to turn on standby mode on your iPhone

One of the new iPhone functions launched with the arrival of iOS 17 — such as offline Apple Maps support — is standby mode. This feature turns your iPhone into a mini smart display that shows you everything from calendar appointments to your favorite photo albums.

Perhaps the most obvious use for standby mode is to turn your iPhone into a bedside clock, displaying the current time and even dimming the screen once the lights go out. But there are plenty of other ways to use it.

Standby mode is available on iPhones running iOS 17, like the iPhone XR, iPhone

If you have the Pro or Pro Max version of the iPhone 14 or 15, your device can permanently display standby on the screen. On other models, you’ll need to wake the screen to see it: you can do this by tapping the screen or waving your hand in front of it.

(Related: 6 Cool Features You Can Try on iOS 17)

To activate standby mode automatically, charge your iPhone and prop it on its side and at an angle (so it’s not flat on a surface). Once your device meets all of these conditions, standby mode turns on – and the first time this happens, you’ll see a message explaining what standby mode is. By default, you’ll see the Clock and Calendar widgets appear first. To exit standby mode, simply pick up your phone, lay it flat, or remove it from the charger.

This feature works with both wired and wireless charging, but MagSafe chargers have an added function: Standby mode remembers how it was configured on each separate charger, so you can have different settings for different rooms (bedroom and kitchen, for example). ).

Customize standby mode

Swiping left or right on the standby screen will cycle through the different views available to you. There’s a widget screen, a photo screen, and a clock screen, and on each of them you can swipe up and down for different configurations.

On the Widgets screen, the screen is divided into two parts so you can swipe up and down separately to scroll through the available widgets. You can choose from weather forecasts, upcoming calendar appointments, and any active reminders.

Long press on the widgets screen to remove add-ons from the list (via the minus button) or add new ones (via the plus button). The widgets you see will depend on the apps installed on your phone, but there are a bunch of native apps built into iOS to get you started.

Other than the widgets available to you, you’ll see other options similar to the ones you have for widgets on the home screen. Intelligent rotation It will intelligently change the available tools based on the time of day and your usual habits Widget suggestions You’ll add widgets based on the apps you already use often.

A long press also opens options on the Photos screen, allowing you to choose a specific album in your gallery that’s different from the photos selected by standby.

A long press on the watch screen brings up the options available for that specific watch, but as of now, there’s no option to add a new watch face.

Back at the standby screen in iOS Settings, you can customize the standby feature in several other ways. the Show notifications The toggle determines whether incoming notifications will appear in standby mode or not – enable the option Show preview only on click The option below if you prefer that previews (such as the first lines of messages) not appear on the screen.

(Related: Hand gesture interactions are one of the coolest new features in macOS Sonoma)

You can also click Night mode And empowerment Night mode Electrical disconnect switch. This feature dims the screen and turns everything on it red when your iPhone detects that it is in a dark environment. This way, StandBy won’t keep you from falling asleep. It has the same screen Movement to wake up Toggle switch: Keep it on if you want to be able to wake the screen with a wave, or turn it off if you find that your night flips are constantly lighting up the screen while you’re in bed.