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I use f.lux on my Mac [1] and Night Shift on my iPhone since on the latter there is no alternative thanks to Apple's limitations. There is an immense differenc

I use f.lux on my Mac [1] and Night Shift on my iPhone since on the latter there is no alternative thanks to Apple's limitations. There is an immense difference between the two. Night Shift just tints the screen lightly. The colors are all still there, including blues. f.lux kicks in gradually, but at its peak my screen is completely orange and colors are not discernible anymore. Empirically, I can see why Night Shift makes no difference. Edit: On the f.lux website they cite extensive research on the effects of blue light on sleep. [2] [1] https://justgetflux.com/news/pages/macquickstart/ https://justgetflux.com/news/pages/macquickstart/ [2] https://justgetflux.com/research.html https://justgetflux.com/research.html

dijit 5y ago
The backlight is blue in hue. It’s imperceptible to us because we look for colour differences. But if you compare the “white” of your iPhone screen to the “white” of a t-shirt in the sun you will notice that it’s still blue light. Computer screens have no option to not emit blue light, all their light is a tinted blue hue. This sounds stupid because _obviously_ screens emit colour! And they could just cut out the blue colour!? But the backlight is always emiting some amount of blue light. https://bluelightatnight.com/the-problem-with-flux/ https://bluelightatnight.com/the-problem-with-flux/
- Der_Einzige 5y ago
  Wrong, there are many OLED monitors and TVs which do not always emit some amount of blue light. All blue light pixels can be turned off.
  - dijit 5y ago
    OLED helps a lot actually! That is talked about in the article I posted. I didn’t want to copy it all out verbatim.
  - carlmr 5y ago
    I'm still hoping for OLED monitors or something similar. Until now the best I've found if VA panels. Not the best in viewing angles and color accuracy, but they have pretty good contrast. And to me contrast is what matters most. With higher contrast (black being black) it's much easier to work with less backlight, and that in turn makes for less eye strain.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    "Wrong, there are many OLED's" Many? They are less than 1% of current fleet of computers, I don't know a single person that has one. Still very expensive.
- moogleii 5y ago
  FYI, since the last few years, most recent iPhones are OLED.
- avianlyric 5y ago
  iPhones with OLEDs and TrueTone can (and do) compensate for this. The OLED removes the backlight, so no requirement to emit blue hues ever, and TrueTone matches the screens colour temperature to surrounding light sources, so colours look like should if the screen was a reflective surface, rather than an emissive surface.
- KaiserPro 5y ago
  You are confusing colour temperature with emitting blue light. Natural sunlight at noon in a blue sky is >8000k. your screen will be 5600k or there abouts. The reason why they look blue is because you are normally inside, with low colour temperature domestic lights. taking your device outside at noon on a clear sky day will not make your screen look blue. It'll make it look very dark. > Computer screens have no option to not emit blue light, all their light is a tinted blue hue. I mean thats not really true. Yes an "off" LCD will leak light, but it wont be anywhere near as much blue light as "low" colour temperature white screen. There are standards for this sort of thing to guarantee colour correctness. HDRI LCDs should be almost completely dark when black. but your main point; no they shouldn't be tinted blue. They should assuming they are not utterly rubbish be emitting a decent range of of spectra. The filter efficacy of the R,G and B pixels is pretty good. Its not perfect, but its way below anything that we can meaningfully detect with our eyes. Especially as eyes are not absolute sensors.
agarsev 5y ago
In the research page linked, there is extensive research on the effects of bright light exposure to circadian rythms, which may indeed alter quality of sleep by altering natural biorythms (note that no effect is produced on sleep itself, but rather on its timing, and this in turn affects its quality). There is, however, very little research linked to blue light in particular, and it is inconclusive and contradictory. The best source they cite is actually against the hypothesis: "Occasional claims that the light sources with emissions containing blue light may cause eye damage raise concerns in the media. The aim of the study was to determine if it was appropriate to issue advice on the public health concerns. A number of sources were assessed and the exposure conditions were compared with international exposure limits, and the exposure likely to be received from staring at a blue sky. None of the sources assessed approached the exposure limits, even for extended viewing times." On a more subjective note, how they bury the actual research below tons of related-but-not-really articles, pop media links, and "explanations" makes me suspicious. And mind, I do set my screen to redder tones in the evening and find it pleasant and probably helps me set the mood to go to bed, but I don't think research supports physiological or health reasons to avoid blue light or spend money on blue light avoiding, as the OP link seems to say (I don't read German :(
meue 5y ago
For your iPhone, you can use Color Filters under Accessibility -> Display & Text Size -> Color Filters. Set it to Color Tint and play around with the sliders to your liking (I personally set intensity to ~85%, hue ~8%, and compound it with Night Shift). I also use Reduce White Point (also located in the same place) to further reduce the screen brightness. With these two features, you can get your phone very similar to f.lux. You can set these two features as active in Accessibility Shortcuts (bottom of the Accessibility menu), allowing them to be quickly toggled by triple clicking the power button. As an alternative gesture, you can also set Accessibility Shortcuts to activate via triple tap on the backside of the phone (Accessibility -> Touch -> Back Tap).

dijit 5y ago

The backlight is blue in hue. It’s imperceptible to us because we look for colour differences. But if you compare the “white” of your iPhone screen to the “white” of a t-shirt in the sun you will notice that it’s still blue light. Computer screens have no option to not emit blue light, all their light is a tinted blue hue. This sounds stupid because _obviously_ screens emit colour! And they could just cut out the blue colour!? But the backlight is always emiting some amount of blue light. https://bluelightatnight.com/the-problem-with-flux/ https://bluelightatnight.com/the-problem-with-flux/

Der_Einzige 5y ago
Wrong, there are many OLED monitors and TVs which do not always emit some amount of blue light. All blue light pixels can be turned off.
- dijit 5y ago
  OLED helps a lot actually! That is talked about in the article I posted. I didn’t want to copy it all out verbatim.
- carlmr 5y ago
  I'm still hoping for OLED monitors or something similar. Until now the best I've found if VA panels. Not the best in viewing angles and color accuracy, but they have pretty good contrast. And to me contrast is what matters most. With higher contrast (black being black) it's much easier to work with less backlight, and that in turn makes for less eye strain.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  "Wrong, there are many OLED's" Many? They are less than 1% of current fleet of computers, I don't know a single person that has one. Still very expensive.
moogleii 5y ago
FYI, since the last few years, most recent iPhones are OLED.
avianlyric 5y ago
iPhones with OLEDs and TrueTone can (and do) compensate for this. The OLED removes the backlight, so no requirement to emit blue hues ever, and TrueTone matches the screens colour temperature to surrounding light sources, so colours look like should if the screen was a reflective surface, rather than an emissive surface.
KaiserPro 5y ago
You are confusing colour temperature with emitting blue light. Natural sunlight at noon in a blue sky is >8000k. your screen will be 5600k or there abouts. The reason why they look blue is because you are normally inside, with low colour temperature domestic lights. taking your device outside at noon on a clear sky day will not make your screen look blue. It'll make it look very dark. > Computer screens have no option to not emit blue light, all their light is a tinted blue hue. I mean thats not really true. Yes an "off" LCD will leak light, but it wont be anywhere near as much blue light as "low" colour temperature white screen. There are standards for this sort of thing to guarantee colour correctness. HDRI LCDs should be almost completely dark when black. but your main point; no they shouldn't be tinted blue. They should assuming they are not utterly rubbish be emitting a decent range of of spectra. The filter efficacy of the R,G and B pixels is pretty good. Its not perfect, but its way below anything that we can meaningfully detect with our eyes. Especially as eyes are not absolute sensors.

agarsev 5y ago

In the research page linked, there is extensive research on the effects of bright light exposure to circadian rythms, which may indeed alter quality of sleep by altering natural biorythms (note that no effect is produced on sleep itself, but rather on its timing, and this in turn affects its quality). There is, however, very little research linked to blue light in particular, and it is inconclusive and contradictory. The best source they cite is actually against the hypothesis: "Occasional claims that the light sources with emissions containing blue light may cause eye damage raise concerns in the media. The aim of the study was to determine if it was appropriate to issue advice on the public health concerns. A number of sources were assessed and the exposure conditions were compared with international exposure limits, and the exposure likely to be received from staring at a blue sky. None of the sources assessed approached the exposure limits, even for extended viewing times." On a more subjective note, how they bury the actual research below tons of related-but-not-really articles, pop media links, and "explanations" makes me suspicious. And mind, I do set my screen to redder tones in the evening and find it pleasant and probably helps me set the mood to go to bed, but I don't think research supports physiological or health reasons to avoid blue light or spend money on blue light avoiding, as the OP link seems to say (I don't read German :(

meue 5y ago

For your iPhone, you can use Color Filters under Accessibility -> Display & Text Size -> Color Filters. Set it to Color Tint and play around with the sliders to your liking (I personally set intensity to ~85%, hue ~8%, and compound it with Night Shift). I also use Reduce White Point (also located in the same place) to further reduce the screen brightness. With these two features, you can get your phone very similar to f.lux. You can set these two features as active in Accessibility Shortcuts (bottom of the Accessibility menu), allowing them to be quickly toggled by triple clicking the power button. As an alternative gesture, you can also set Accessibility Shortcuts to activate via triple tap on the backside of the phone (Accessibility -> Touch -> Back Tap).