If you’ve ever seen a red light flashing at the top of your iPhone screen, you’re not alone. The flashing red light, typically seen when using an iPhone in a dark room, is linked to the device’s Face ID TrueDepth camera. The technology uses infrared sensors to recognize who is using the device, and it’s one of the features that makes iPhones worth their price.
Face ID uses these infrared sensors to identify who you are by mapping your face. Once set up, Face ID can verify a user’s face against the card they have registered. If they match, Face ID can then automatically unlock access to the device.
Infrared sensors also support an iPhone’s Attention Aware feature, which changes a device’s behavior when it knows you’re actually looking at the screen. Face ID is also used to approve purchases, authenticate apps, and access passwords. It is available on most iPhones released after the 2017 iPhone X as well as newer iPad models.
Don’t confuse the infrared sensor’s flashing red light with the on-screen microphone indicator, which is also an important privacy enhancement. The latter appears as an orange dot near the upper right corner of the screen when an app activates the microphone, for example to record a voice memo. The microphone indicator may also appear in the space around the front camera, called Dynamic Island. This feature can also do a lot of things.
Disable the Flashing Red Infrared Sensor Light on iPhones
You can’t completely turn off the blinking red light because it’s tied to several features, including Attention Awareness, Face ID, and the phone’s proximity sensor. But you can minimize its frequency by turning off settings that constantly scan for your face.
To turn off iPhone awareness technology, for example, open your iPhone’s “Settings” app, tap “Face ID & Passcode” and enter your device’s passcode to continue. Finally, turn off “Attention Awareness Features”. Your iPhone will no longer regularly check if you’re looking at the screen, but that also means you’ll lose features like the phone automatically reducing alert notifications when you use the device. Attention awareness can also decrease the brightness of an iPhone.
Another feature related to attention awareness that you can turn off is “Require attention for Face ID”. When enabled, the feature requires you to look at the phone screen for Face ID to activate.
