This Is How Your iPhone Could Help You Sleep Better...

Apple's rolling out a cool new function very soon

Using your iPhone before bed is definitely not conducive to a good a night's sleep, but the latest Apple update might make the addictive habit a little easier on the eyes - and send us off to the land of nod quicker.

Apple's next software update for iPhone and iPad (iOS 9.3) will include 'Night Shift' - a new automatic feature which uses the device’s clock and location to figure out where the sun is setting and what time it is. The phone then shifts the colours on a 'warmer' or 'cooler' light spectrum, making the screen much easier to look at whatever the time of day.

This is what it's going to look like:

https://vine.co/v/iMDKQHtIJIg/embed/simple

Source: Mashable

Apple said on their own page for the feature that 'many studies have shown that exposure to bright blue light in the evening can affect your circadian rhythms and make it harder to fall asleep'.

This is because screens produce a bright light which affects the body's ability to produce the sleep hormone melatonin, keeping us alert when we should be winding down. Melatonin is usually produced naturally as the sun sets and the evening grows darker, but all this late-night scrolling is keeping us up, so it's great Apple is helping us tackle the problem.

Apple's new feature is set to be automatic, so after a while you might forget that it's actually on. Unless of course (as some critics have pointed out) you're going to be watching videos in the dark and you actually want the screen to be brighter - in which case it will be hella-annoying. However, there's going to be the option to turn off Night Shift in settings, so the user has full control. (Don't they just think of everything?) Other features that are coming with iOS 9.3 include the option to lock away all your drafts in the Notes app (accessing it with passwords or fingerprint only) and an expansion of the Health app so it can store more information.

We're counting down the days until our next update, because anything that helps us sleep after two hours of stealthy-night-time-stalking is a welcome addition to our phones.