The iPhone’s StandBy feature is handy with its horizontal clock and calendar widgets, but it can also be alarming when you don’t expect it. If you find yourself trapped in this automatic screensaver mode, there’s an easy way to turn this off—as long as you know where to look.
What Is This Horizontal Screensaver on My iPhone?
It’s late and you’ve fallen asleep watching the latest episode of The Traitors on your iPhone. Suddenly, a noise wakes you up, and you face an unexpected jump scare: a picture of your ex staring back at you from your phone screen. Panicked, you attempt to swipe away from the photo—only to be bombarded with clocks, calendars, and other widgets. How do you escape this nightmare?
Maybe you haven’t had this exact experience, but don’t blame me for seeking some camaraderie in my blunt discovery of the iPhone’s StandBy mode. Theintention behind iOS 17’s StandBy modeis for the feature to transform your phone into a bedside clock, or create an informative screensaver. The mode only activates when your phone is charging and in landscape orientation.
ButStandBy is not for everyone. Because it’s been automatically enabled since iOS 17, you might not even know it’s there (I didn’t). Unfortunately, this can make it difficult to disable StandBy when you don’t know what it’s called.
How to Disable StandBy on Your iPhone
After erroneously sifting through Display & Brightness settings in my quest to disable the feature, I eventually located StandBy as its own setting category. Once you know where to look, it’s very easy to disable StandBy on your iPhone:
If you’d prefer to keep StandBy but modify it to suit your preferences, you may also explore the other available sliders, such asNight Mode. You may alsocustomize how you receive notifications while your iPhone is in StandBy mode.
Other modifications includecustomizing your StandBy widgets, as there are some useful nighttime options like brown noise.
As someone who almost always has my iPhone locked in portrait orientation, I discovered StandBy late in the game. While I understand the use of this feature as an alternative to a bedside clock, a sudden introduction featuring random photos from a past life was not my idea of a good time.
Hopefully, this guide saves you from the prison of the mysterious (maybe even maniacal) horizontal iOS screensaver that is StandBy.
