Night Mode Portrait disappears on the iPhone 17 lineup, but Apple won’t say why.
If you’ve tried to take a portrait shot with your new iPhone 17 Pro, you might have noticed that a feature is missing.
Portrait Mode was first introduced with the iPhone 7 Plus, and it uses depth data to create an artificial bokeh effect in the background of a photo. Since the iPhone 12 Pro, thanks to the LiDAR scanner, Portrait Mode also works in combination with Night Mode – but that seems to have changed with the iPhone 17 Pro.
As noted by many users on Reddit and Apple’s own discussion forums and confirmed in this support document, the feature has quietly disappeared from the latest iPhone models.How Night Mode on iPhone works
For those unfamiliar with it, Night Mode essentially enables a longer exposure on the camera, which can range from 1 second to 30 seconds, depending on the lighting conditions in the environment. With a longer exposure, the sensor captures more light, resulting in better photos in the dark.
Starting with the iPhone 15 Pro, most regular photos can be converted to Portrait mode – that’s because the Camera app automatically stores depth data in the background. However, on the iPhone 17 Pro, photos taken at night with Night Mode turned on don’t have the depth data needed to be converted to Portrait mode.
