How to fix Night Light on Windows 10

On Windows 10, you can troubleshoot and fix problems with Night Light in several different ways, and in this guide, we’ll show you how.

The “Night light” feature has been designed to reduce the blue light on the screen at night to help reduce eye strain and improve sleep quality. It’s similar to Apple’s Night Shift and Android’s Night mode.

However, if you enable Night Light on your computer, sometimes the feature may not work correctly (usually, after installing a new feature update). For instance, the feature may not turn off automatically on a schedule, even after restarting or powering off the device. In other devices, the blue light filter option appears grayed out with no way to enable it.

This guide will teach you a few ways to fix the blue light filter feature on Windows 10. (If you can’t change the Night Light settings because they appear grayed out, use this guide to reset the feature.)

Fix Night Light on Windows 10

On Windows 10, Night Light depends on your computer’s graphics driver to adjust the color temperature to reduce the blue light. If the video card driver installed isn’t compatible with the version of Windows, chances are that the feature will be grayed out or won’t work correctly.

Reinstall graphics driver

You should manually install the latest video driver to resolve this issue. You can complete this task by downloading the latest graphic drivers from your manufacturer’s support website and using their instructions to update the device.

If the device uses the manufacturer’s software, such as the one from NVidia or AMD, it’s best to uninstall the software through Settings > Apps, selecting the graphics application, and clicking the “Uninstall” option from the menu on the right side. This should remove the driver and software components.

If you use the driver available through the graphics card manufacturer, you can also use the Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU) tool to perform a clean uninstall of the video driver, and then reinstall the driver to see if it fixes the Night Light problem.

To fix Night Light by reinstalling the graphics driver manually on Windows 10, use these steps:

1. Open Start on Windows 10.

2. Search for Device Manager and click the top result to open the app.

3. Expand the Display adapters branch.

4. Right-click the graphic card and click the Uninstall device option.

   

5. Check the “Delete the driver software from this device” option (if applicable).

6. Click the Uninstall button.

7. Restart your computer.

After rebooting your computer, Windows 10 should automatically reinstall the latest graphics drivers available from Windows Update. However, it should be noted that if you checked the option to delete the driver from your device, you may need to reinstall the driver manually.

To ensure that Windows 10 installs the driver back on Settings > Update & security > Windows Update, and then click the “Check for updates” button.

Disable Night Light on Windows 10

If you’re able to enable the feature, but it’s not turning off automatically on a schedule, and updating the graphics driver didn’t fix the problem, the workaround is to manually disable Night Light.

To disable the Night Light feature on Windows 10, use these steps:

1. Open Settings.

2. Click on Devices.

3. Click on Display.

4. Turn off the Night light toggle switch.

   

Resetting Night Light settings manually

To reset the Night Light settings using the Registry to fix problems, use these steps:

1. Open Start.

2. Type regedit and click the top result to open the Registry.

3. Browse the following path:

   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\CloudStore\Store\DefaultAccount\Cloud

4. Inside the “Cloud” (folder) key, right-click and delete the following two keys (folders):

   $$windows.data.bluelightreduction.bluelightreductionstate
   $$windows.data.bluelightreduction.settings

   

5. Restart your computer.

Once you complete the steps, the Night Light settings will be reset, and the feature should start working again.

Install F.lux to reduce blue light

Although Night Light is a useful feature on Windows 10, it’s not exactly new. F.lux is a third-party utility that has been around for years, and it works exactly the same as the Night Light mode is supposed to work.

If you want to give F.lux a try, at least until Microsoft fixes its own feature, you can learn how to get F.lux and set it up using this guide.

Reinstall Windows 10 to fix Night Light

When nothing works, and you really want to use this feature, as the last resort, you can try a Windows 10 clean installation.