Apple just gave the iPhone 17 Pro a new Accessibility setting that might quietly be the most important feature of the year.
It’s a toggle to disable pulse width modulation, or PWM, the flickering method OLED screens use to dim at lower brightness levels. If you’ve never heard of PWM, you’re probably fine. If you have, you know exactly why this matters.
For years, people sensitive to PWM have been stuck with a bad choice: use an iPhone and deal with eye strain and headaches, or avoid OLED screens altogether.
Now, deep in Display and Text Size settings, Apple has finally put in an option to turn PWM off. You can just flip a switch, and the iPhone will dim in a different way.
Of course, there’s a tradeoff. Apple says disabling PWM might affect low-brightness performance, which is Apple-speak for “it might not look quite as nice.”
But for people who’ve been begging for this option for years, that’s hardly a dealbreaker. The fact that Apple even acknowledged the problem is a win.
Right now, the toggle is confirmed for the iPhone 17 Pro running iOS 26, though it might show up on other 17 models.
That fits Apple’s usual playbook of giving the Pros all the goodies first. Still, it’s one of those features that feels bigger than a spec sheet.
It’s Apple admitting that not everyone’s eyes work the same way and actually doing something about it.
Headaches, eye strain, weird fatigue at night, PWM has been blamed for all of it. If this little switch works as advertised, the iPhone 17 Pro might not just be Apple’s most powerful phone yet. It might also be the first iPhone that doesn’t make some of its users feel sick.
