Apple removes Night Mode Portraits on the iPhone 17 Pro series in low light
The change forces users to choose between a bright Night Mode shot or a blurred-background Portrait in low light.
If you’ve ever taken a portrait of someone in a dim restaurant or at a concert, you know how iPhones usually handle it. Recent Pro models could brighten the shot with Night Mode and still keep the soft background blur that Portrait mode adds. It was one of those features people relied on without thinking about how it worked.
This week, though, iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max owners noticed that the option has quietly disappeared. Switch to Portrait in low light, and the Night Mode icon no longer appears. The phone also stops saving the depth data needed to add blur later. Users flagged the change on Reddit and Apple’s forums, and Apple’s documentation confirms that the 17 Pro series simply no longer supports the combo.
Night Mode Portraits used to work because the camera captured depth information even in very low light. On the iPhone 17 Pro lineup, that depth data simply isn’t saved in those conditions, which means the blur effect can’t be applied. The practical impact translates to low-light portraits that now require choosing between brightness and background separation. Moments that depend on fast, flattering low-light shots, birthday dinners, concerts, and late-night events lose a feature many people never realized they depended on.
Ogbonda Chivumnovu
Apple hasn’t explained the decision, but there are technical factors that make the change plausible. Combining Night Mode’s long exposures with Portrait’s depth mapping can introduce motion blur, increase noise, or force the camera to drop resolution.
Older Night Portraits often landed at 12MP, while the iPhone 17 Pro shoots at higher native resolutions. Maintaining image quality at those levels may have required Apple to remove the combined mode entirely. Multiple outlets have pointed to these trade-offs as the most likely reason.
For now, iPhone 17 Pro users have to pick between a bright Night Mode shot or a blurred-background Portrait. Third-party apps can simulate depth or background blur after the fact, but results vary. Unless Apple reverses the decision in a software update, Night Mode Portraits are effectively gone from the newest Pro models, and low-light portraits will require a bit more planning.
Louis Eriakha
