Green dot when taking pictures iOS 14

Last Updated on Feb 5, 2022

Smartphone photography has come a long way in recent years. But are they devoid of flares? I guess not!

Has this ever happened that you’ve taken a picture of a beautiful night sky on your iPhone only to discover that there was a green dot in the middle of it, ruining everything? Fortunately, there is a simple method for removing the green spot from your iPhone photos.

This is an all-too-common issue for iPhone users, and you’ve probably encountered it before. Despite popular belief, the appearance of a green spot in your photos does not indicate a problem with your phone. Allow me to deconstruct it for you. 

What’s the significance of the green dot in my iPhone photos?

Let us begin with the cause of the problem. When you click a photograph subjected to a strong light source in the background, the green spot or flare is bound to appear. For example, suppose you photograph a sunrise, sunset, or anything else with a bright light or sun in your peripheral field or outside the peripheral field. In that case, you will almost certainly end up with the dreaded pesky green spot, lens flare, or haze.

The problem is caused by light entering the camera at an angle and reflecting off the camera’s surface or the lens cover. This is a problem that every iPhone user faces, regardless of the model. 

This is definitely not a flaw in your iPhone!!!!

It’s just physics at work, and to be fair, virtually any camera, large or small, can experience the same issue. For example, lens flares are caused when bright light strikes a camera’s sensor and scatters. Though they can occasionally improve a photograph, they are generally undesirable. 

On iPhones, the cursed green dot appears most frequently in night mode portraits or photos and often not until after you’ve taken the photo. So, is the world coming to an end because of it? Obviously not. However, it is understood that it is incredibly inconvenient if you have paid extra for a better phone camera. 

So, next, we will be learning how to prevent that green spot from appearing on your photos.

How to avoid the green spot from appearing on your iPhone camera?

Now that you’re aware of the green dot and what’s causing it, it will be much easier for you to try to prevent it from happening in the first place. There are a few things you can do to reduce or prevent the appearance of the spot.

The first commonly applied method is to tilt the iPhone slightly so that the green dot is directly in the source of light, which will cause it to disappear. In this case, a Reddit user shared his experience, saying that while taking a photo of bright light, he positioned the phone so that the green dot was directly in the center of the light, making the green dot disappear without significantly changing the angle of the photo.

Another commonly used trick is to use your lens to shield the iPhone’s lens. However, this method has been said to produce some inconsistencies. Well, whatever the case may be, this is an option you can try for yourself and see! 

How to get rid of the green spot in your iPhone photos?

If you have any beautiful photos in your Camera Roll, but the green dot has ruined them, here’s how you can remove them:

There are a lot of apps in the App Store which allow you to do this, but one in particular app stands out as the best. It’s called Snapseed, and it’s also completely free!

While it has a plethora of photo editing tools, one feature, in particular, stands out called healing. This feature will allow you to remove the green dot without causing any further damage to the photo.

1. First, download Snapseed from the App Store.
2. Then, launch the app and select the photo you want to improve.
3. Select the Healing tool from the Edit menu.
4. Zoom in on the green spot, then draw over it with your finger. When you remove your finger from the screen, you will notice that the spot has been removed.
5. To save the changes, click the checkmark in the bottom right corner of the screen. After that, save your photo, and your photo will no longer appear to have a green spot in the first place.

Now that you’re aware of the problem, it’s much easier to make simple changes to how you shoot photos to avoid it. Of course, in the worst-case scenario, you can always use Snapseed to remove the green dot from your photos.

If you’ve upgraded your iPhone to iOS 14 already, you may have noticed a little green dot at the top of your screen when using certain apps. It’s a new security feature Apple came up with to help you have peace of mind about your camera privacy.

What is the Green Dot on My iPhone?

When you see the little green dot, that means that there’s an app that’s actively using your iPhone’s camera. If you see an orange dot, that means an app is using your microphone.

“An indicator appears at the top of your screen whenever an app is using your microphone or camera,” Apple says. “And in Control Center, you can see if an app has used them recently.”

What this means is that if you see a green dot but aren’t aware of any app needing your camera, there may be an app secretly accessing the camera to spy on you.

Swiping down to open your control center will show you exactly which app was responsible for the camera use.

How Do I Block Apps from Using My Camera?

If you find an app abusing your camera, you can revoke its camera permissions in your Settings app to make sure it doesn’t happen again (assuming you don’t want to delete the app entirely).

This change is part of a push by Apple to give users more confidence about their privacy through transparency. MacBooks have long had a green light next to the webcam that turns on with the camera, and now iPhones have a digital version of that same indicator.

In July of this year, Instagram was found to turn on the iPhone’s “camera on” indicator even when users weren’t taking photos. This week, an Instagram user based in New Jersey filed a lawsuit against Facebook in federal court in San Francisco, accusing Instagram of intentionally and secretly using the camera to collect “lucrative and valuable data on its users that it would not otherwise have access to.”

The complaint says that by “obtaining extremely private and intimate personal data on their users, including in the privacy of their own homes,” Instagram and Facebook collect “valuable insights and market research.”

Facebook has stated that the “camera on” notification was simply a software bug that triggered a false notification when the camera wasn’t actually being accessed or used.

Apple’s new iOS 14 camera notification dot should help ease iPhone users’ fears of this type of privacy issue.

With iOS 14, an orange dot, an orange square or a green dot indicates when the microphone or camera is being used by an app. 

An orange indicator 

This indicator appears as an orange square if the Differentiate Without Colour setting is on.
Go to Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size. 

A green indicator 

Learn about status icons and symbols on your iPhone.