The Mystery of the iPhone 17 Pro’s Missing Night Mode for Portraits
It’s a mystery. Night mode isn’t available in Portrait mode on the iPhone 17 Pro, and no one seems to know why. Again.
Night mode automatically brightens photos and captures more details, even in low light conditions. You can set the exposure time manually. In Portrait mode, the camera sharply focuses on the subject you are photographing and blurs the background, creating a depth-of-field effect.
The first clue that Night mode for Portrait mode was gone came from an Apple support document titled Take Night Mode Photos with Your iPhone Camera. It states what many iPhone aficionados already know: “Night mode automatically brightens photos and captures more details in low-light conditions.”
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The iPhone 17 Pro’s Night Mode is listed in two separate parts of the iPhone’s online user guide (here and also here) for selfies and time-lapse photos. But it is not included in the guide list to take Night mode photos in Portrait mode. The feature is still available on iPhone Pro and Pro Max on the 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16 series.
After investigation, CNET employees verified that indeed, Night mode is no longer an option in Portrait mode with the iPhone 17 Pro.
An Apple representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At the iPhone 17 Pro launch in September, Andrew Lanxon, CNET’s senior photographer in Europe, was impressed thanks to camera improvements over the iPhone 16 Pro, including doubled optical zoom to 8x, a 56% larger telephoto sensor than before, and 48-megapixel resolution.
Lanxon, a professional photographer and YouTuber, was excited to take photos with the iPhone 17 Pro. But apparently, he will have to do without Night mode in Portrait mode.
Why did Apple do it?
Why was Night mode removed? “There doesn’t appear to be any material reason for this,” said Jeff Carlson, CNET’s senior editor. “The Lidar camera that helps with low-light focusing and depth perception is still there. This may be a software issue, but since the iOS 26.2 release candidatethe functionality is not present.”
Carlson found it curious that it took three months since the new professional model was launched before people noticed its absence. He speculates that the feature may have been removed because it “wasn’t being used and Apple could devote other processing resources elsewhere,” he said. “Maybe something broke in the development of the new OS and Camera app, and it hasn’t been a high enough priority to fix in the regular release schedule.
“People have become accustomed to having iPhone models that allow shots that would otherwise be difficult for smartphone cameras, especially on a flagship like the iPhone 17 Pro,” Carlson said. “I hope this feature returns to give everyone the greatest control over the photos they capture.”
A parallel could be what Samsung did earlier this year: removing Bluetooth connectivity from the S Pen on the new S25 Ultra. Samsung said it removed the feature because few people were using it. Is Apple doing the same thing with Night mode for portraits?
Some people miss it, some people don’t
A subreddit on the subject seemed to be a mix of “who cares” and “oh damn”. Redditor kaoss_pad was “quietly happy” that the feature was gone, saying that “it would often surprise me and activate when I didn’t want it to and ruin a moment.”
Some Redditors weren’t even aware of this feature. CultofCedar posted, “lol I didn’t even notice that wasn’t a thing,” and Successful-Cover5433 wrote, “I didn’t even know you could.”
A few people weren’t happy about the mysterious disappearance, including nsfdrag, who posted: “It’s pretty disappointing, I like this feature.”
