Why is there a red light on my phone near the camera?

See a red light on your smart­phone cam­era? Many peo­ple are wor­ried when they first dis­cov­er this “hid­den” sur­prise, but don’t wor­ry, your phone isn’t spy­ing on you. This red light you see is a fea­ture com­mon to many cam­eras. Here we will explain what it is and why it’s there.

A simple explanation for red lights on cameras

This red light is an infrared light that helps phone cam­eras focus. It turns on when the cam­era detects low-lit envi­ron­ments and adjusts the cam­eras set­tings accord­ing­ly. Pro-tip: If you want to avoid the red glow use your phone’s flash­light dur­ing night­time shots!

Red lights help with focusing

A cam­er­a’s lens needs a source of light to focus and pro­duce an accu­rate image. The red light is used as a high­ly effi­cient and uni­form form of illu­mi­na­tion for the cam­era, and has no neg­a­tive ram­i­fi­ca­tions on the health or well­be­ing of the phone’s own­ers or oper­a­tors via radi­a­tion emis­sion or oth­er effects. Oth­er­wise your cam­era would have trou­ble focus­ing in the dark.

Red lights help shoot in low-light conditions

Low light can be a pop­u­lar way to por­tray sus­pense, but it also has an unfor­tu­nate con­se­quence of pro­duc­ing fuzzy images with low­er qual­i­ty details than those tak­en in brighter con­di­tions. To com­pen­sate for this, some phones come equip with a sen­sor which mea­sures both the ambi­ent and bright­est glare before decid­ing on how best to adjust and cal­i­brate what’s seen for any giv­en pho­to set­ting choice. Head­ing into night­mode will often arti­fi­cial­ly pro­duce more light just before snap­ping away, but if that does­n’t solve