Is it a bug? Is it a technical issue? Or did Apple just yank a camera feature that wasn’t popular?

It’s a mystery. Night mode isn’t available in Portrait Mode on the iPhone 17 Pro, and no one seems to know why. Yet.

Night mode automatically brightens photos and captures more details, even in low-light conditions. You can adjust the exposure time manually. In Portrait mode, the camera focuses sharply on the subject you’re snapping and blurs the background, creating a depth-of-field effect.

The first clue that Night mode for Portrait mode was gone came from an Apple support document titled Take Night mode photos with your iPhone camera. It states what many iPhone aficionados already know: “Night mode automatically brightens photos and captures more detail in low light.”

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Night mode for the iPhone 17 Pro is listed in two separate parts of the iPhone online user guide (here and also here) for selfies and time-lapse photos. But it isn’t included on the guide’s list for snapping Night mode photos in Portrait mode. The feature is still available on iPhone Pro and Pro Max on the 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16 series.

Upon investigation, CNET staffers verified that, indeed, Night mode is no longer an option in Portrait mode with the iPhone 17 Pro.

An Apple representative didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

When the iPhone 17 Pro was launched in September, Andrew Lanxon, CNET’s lead photographer in Europe, was impressed by the camera upgrades over the iPhone 16 Pro, including optical zoom that doubled to 8x, a telephoto camera sensor 56% larger than before and 48 megapixels of resolution. 

Lanxon, a professional photographer and YouTuber, was excited to get shooting with the iPhone 17 Pro. But apparently, he will have to do without Night mode in Portrait mode.

Why did Apple do it?

Why was Night mode removed? “There doesn’t appear to be a hardware reason for it,” said CNET senior writer Jeff Carlson. “The Lidar camera that helps with low-light focusing and depth perception is still there. Perhaps it’s a software issue, but as of the iOS 26.2 release candidate, the feature isn’t present.”

Carlson found it curious that it’s taken three months since the launch of the new pro model before people noticed that it’s missing. He speculates that the feature was possibly removed because it “wasn’t being used and Apple could devote other processing resources elsewhere,” he said. “Perhaps something broke in the development of the new operating system and revamped Camera app, and it hasn’t been a high enough priority to fix in the regular release schedule.

“People have gotten used to having iPhone models that enable shots that are otherwise difficult for smartphone cameras, especially on a flagship like the iPhone 17 Pro,” Carlson said. “I hope the feature returns to give everyone the most control over the photos they capture.”

One parallel might be what Samsung did earlier this year — removing S Pen Bluetooth connectivity on the new S25 Ultra. Samsung said they removed the feature because not many people were using it. Is Apple doing the same thing with Night mode for portraits?

Some people miss it, some don’t

A subreddit on the topic appeared to be a mix of “who cares” and “oh darn.” Redditor kaoss_pad was “low key happy” that the feature had vanished, saying that “it would often surprise me and activate when I didn’t want it and ruin a moment.”

Some Redditors weren’t even aware of the feature. CultofCedar posted, “lol didn’t even notice that wasn’t a thing,” and Successful-Cover5433 wrote, “I didn’t even know you could.”

A couple of folks weren’t happy about the mysterious disappearance, including nsfdrag, who posted, “Kind of a bummer, I like the feature.”