Yes, night is when the magic happens, but there’s more nuance here. A satellite is visible because it is dark where you are, but the satellite is still flying in daylight. This means your viewing location must be close to the edge of the envelope of the Earth's shadow, which makes the sweet spot early evening or early morning.
After the Sun goes down in the evening or before it comes up in the morning, we go through a period of transition from day to night known as twilight. Astronomers use three classifications for twilight based on the Sun's elevation angle relative to your local horizon: civil twilight, nautical twilight and astronomical twilight. There is no absolute best time to start your viewing. During civil twilight, the sky might still be too bright. At the beginning of the nautical twilight, conditions improve, and that’s usually a good time to start your satellite spying. The astronomical twilight then comes, the sky is completely dark, but by then, some satellites may have already called it a night.
Depending on your latitude, you may notice significant variations in your window of opportunity for satellite viewing. If you live at a high latitude, either in the northern or southern hemisphere, you will find that you can observe satellites long into the night during the summer. This is because your location does not pass as deeply into the Earth's shadow as it does during the winter. And if you live above the Arctic or Antarctic circles in the summer? Let’s just say the satellites get a little camera-shy when it’s daylight 24/7. In the winter, the situation is reversed. The viewing period tends to be much shorter. At 40 degrees north latitude, you can typically view satellites for only an hour or so in the winter. At lower latitudes, there is less seasonal variation in viewing times.
Keep in mind that satellite orbits change slowly over time, in a phenomenon called orbital precession. This orbital precession causes the position of the orbit plane to constantly change relative to a viewer's position on the Earth. Given that the visibility conditions (viewer in darkness, satellite in sunlight) impose strict constraints on whether or not a satellite is viewable, a particular satellite will not always be viewable every evening. You may observe a satellite on several successive evenings and then not see it again for several months.