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They absolutely help my eyes not be so strained. If its placebo, its a working placebo. >Are people actually using Night Shift? >Aggravatingly, yes. What is t

• thenewnewguy 8mo ago
  I'm not an MD or expert in this field enough to know if OP is right or wrong, but I think it's fairly reasonable to be irritated people are claiming software has a health benefit based on vibes/feels. I thought we as a society had moved on from superstition to evidence-based medicine, but in this very post there are plenty of replies countering OP's scientific analysis and data with anecdotes (which is disappointing regardless of if TFA is correct or incorrect).
  • deleted 8mo ago
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  • geoduck14 8mo ago
    >I think it's fairly reasonable to be irritated people are pushing software based on vibes/feels. You are going to HATE to find out about night-mode in the browser
    • thenewnewguy 8mo ago
      To be fair, I should have said something like "claiming software has a health benefit based on vibes/feels". I personally prefer the look of night/dark mode (or whatever you call it) in apps and the browser, but I'm not going to claim it makes me healthier or improves my sleep or whatever. If you just like how something looks, that's fine, but there's a difference between "I like how X looks" (subjective opinion) than "X helps me sleep better" (difficult to prove but objectively true or false). Edit: Changed this in my original message as it seems multiple people got confused by my prior poor wording.
      • thatcat 8mo ago
        It's not about how it looks aesthetically, you can feel your eye muscles release tension when you go from light to dark mode.
        • IAmBroom 8mo ago
          As someone more trained in science than software, the phrase "you can feel..." is suspicious, even if it's my own feelings. Not invalid; suspicious.
          • nandomrumber 8mo ago
            As a complete psychopath: If I put your hand in a vice and do the vice up to the point where you start saying you can feel the pressure… Yes, of course I’m going to be suspicious. Gaslighting doesn’t exist, you made that up because you’re fucking crazy. /s
          • thatcat 8mo ago
            A phrase like I'm more trained in science is an appeal to authority, which is pretty suspicious, as is not trusting your own observations. How do you trust the data you collect? feel in this case is a muscle contraction not psychological as you're suggesting
          • wtetzner 7mo ago
            Regardless of "health benefits", the phrase "you can feel" seems pretty relevant when it comes to what someone finds comfortable.
        • 0x1ch 8mo ago
          End of the day, dark mode would've been totally ignored if there wasn't a perceivable benefit, placebo or not. People want to make everything difficult, I guess.
          • tcfhgj 8mo ago
            Benefit: saves battery on OLED and goes easier on the OLEDs themselves
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  • jack_pp 8mo ago
    Is it superstition to deduce that I get gassy after eating beans? I need a scientific study to tell me this? Same for if a screen hurts my eyes (not long term, like truly my eyes hurt) when using bright white colors at night.
    • thenewnewguy 8mo ago
      Yes, actually, if someone has direct scientific evidence contrary to the claim (I doubt such evidence exists for your first example as to the best of my knowledge the relationship between beans and gastrointestinal changes is well understood). Your eyes could hurt for a variety of reasons - brightness, too long screen time, being dry for external reasons, etc. Most humans are poor at identifying the cause of one-off events: you may think it's because you turned on a blue-light filter, but it actually could be because you used your phone for an hour less. That's why we have science to actually isolate variables and prove (or at least gather strong evidence for) things about the world, and why doctors don't (or at least shouldn't) make health-related recommendations based on vibes.
      • jack_pp 8mo ago
        It's pretty clear, even on monitor, night and day difference at a push of a button. I'm not arguing if this helps you sleep better but it is pretty arrogant of you to tell me I can't figure out from my own experience if something is comfortable or not.
        • BobaFloutist 8mo ago
          Nobody really cares if it's comfortable or not for you, the debate at hand is whether it's measurably more comfortable for the population at large.
          • cgriswald 8mo ago
            That’s how it should be but the poster is literally calling the individual experiences of others “superstition” based on the population at large.
  • bob1029 8mo ago
    > I think it's fairly reasonable to be irritated people are pushing software based on vibes/feels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_industry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_industry
  • taco_emoji 8mo ago
    > I thought we as a society had moved on from superstition to evidence-based medicine Surely you didn't actually believe that unless you JUST landed here from space after being away for 60 years.
• KaiserPro 8mo ago
  because if you read the article its about blue light filters to aid sleep not ease of reading. The the grift wheel on this particular bandwagon is strong. To the point where my fucking glasses have a blue filter on them, which fucks up my ability to do colour work becuase everything is orange.
  • robinsonb5 8mo ago
    If you wait long enough cataracts will give you that for free.
  • cpburns2009 8mo ago
    Blue light filtering lenses come at a premium. You don't accidentally get them.
    • KaiserPro 8mo ago
      I wasn't paying for them, so it was very much accidental.
      • pavel_lishin 8mo ago
        Someone ran up to you and put them on your face?
      • mikkupikku 8mo ago
        You should go back and demand they be replaced. Such a mistake isn't something you should tolerate.
        • KaiserPro 7mo ago
          I don't go to that optician anymore. The list of mistakes were as follows: 1) it corrected my eye with a slight astigmatism, but over corrected my other eye, so the agregate was pretty much the same 2) the aformentioned blue filter, which is part of the anti-glare coating. 3) my non-astigmatic eye was incorrectly marked with a prescription 4) I don't actually need glasses because I can see to the bottom of the eye chart without them. Its just as I'm now older, my vision is not as good as they used to be. 5) these were designed for "close work" but actually don't really help me focus closer to me. However, arguing that, as a non-proffesional with only a passing understanding of optics (non-biological) with a large multinational company doesn't seem like a good use of time.
• tartoran 8mo ago
  I confirm that this helps me as well. Quite often I don't have any fancy filter, I'm permanently setting display/monitor to low temperature and my eyes/vision couldn't be happier. I don't even need darkmode, regular mode works just fine for me as long as blue light is toned down. Granted, I'm not doing any color correction or anything color sensitive work. I used to have terrible headaches about 20 years ago when I started spending a lot of time in front of the screen. I went to an optometrist who tested my eyes and told me I could get low prescriptions (.5) but warned me that there's no way back and that many people are fine with my current vision, choosing not to get a prescription. Luckily I figured out that it was blue light that was bothering me and once I turned it down I haven't had any problems since. I'm in my mid 40s and my vision has naturally deteriorated a bit but I am still fine with no prescriptions. And I don't believe this to be placebo. Every time I stare at a regular screen for longer than 5 minutes I get eye strain. At the same time I suspect this doesn't help everyone, but at least to me this is a great solution that still works.
  • cellularmitosis 8mo ago
    Can you elaborate on “no way back”?
    • denkmoon 8mo ago
      Not OP, but when I got glasses as an adult and while they really improved the sharpness of my vision I could feel my unassisted vision getting worse, so I stopped using them and get by with slightly unfocused but unassisted vision. I assume if I wore them full time my unassisted vision would degrade to the point where I then need the glasses full time.
      • ifwinterco 8mo ago
        I've got half a diopter (ish) of astigmatism in my right eye and it can be slightly annoying but interesting to know that using glasses would risk making it worse. The weird thing is it seems to get noticeably worse or better depending on how much time I spend outside
      • 8mo ago
• smohare 8mo ago
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• amelius 8mo ago
  Are you sure you are not also changing total luminance?
  • refulgentis 8mo ago
    They are, just, don't realize it. Anything off white will be < luminance than white. People replying they need it need to be turning their monitor brightness down.
    • Melatonic 8mo ago
      Best thing to do is use a scripting app that can make hotkeys for controlling monitor brightness. You can directly control the actual backlight of the monitor and lower it in the evening and at night. Same as pressing the physical button. Great when you have multiple displays
• himata4113 8mo ago
  I actually cannot use my monitor without nightshift, any white page just makes my eyes water, painful even. I had it off for a day when I switched to linux and immediately my eyes started drying out. Safe to say it works for making your eyes less tired at least.
• nsxwolf 8mo ago
  I love Night Shift.
• taeric 8mo ago
  I find it somewhat pleasant, but by far the best thing I did to help my eye strain was greatly lower the brightness. Basically, I was told to make it so that my phone's camera could see something on the screen and my desk at the same time without washing out. After doing that, I have found that the "temperature" of the screen doesn't really matter to me that heavily.
  • kpw94 8mo ago
    > Basically, I was told to make it so that my phone's camera could see something on the screen and my desk at the same time without washing out +1. The low-tech version of this I've heard and I've been doing is: Hold a printed white paper sheet right next to your monitor, and adjust the amount of brightness in monitor so the monitor matches that sheet. This of course requires good overall room lightning where the printed paper would be pleasant to read in first place, whether it's daytime or evening/night
    • taeric 8mo ago
      I think this was what I was told the first time. The advantage of taking a picture with my phone's camera is it kind of made it obvious just how much brighter the screen was then the paper. Which, fair that it may be obvious to others to just scan their eyes from screen to paper. I've been surprised with how much people will just accept the time their eyes have to adjust to a super bright screen. Almost like it doesn't register with them.
    • Marsymars 8mo ago
      There's some overlap with bias lighting here - good overall room lighting works if you've got good daylight, but it's much easier to get bright bias lighting at night than to light up the entire room.
  • DANmode 7mo ago
    Concur that most displays are set 25-50% too bright by default.
• metalliqaz 8mo ago
  My Windows 10 PC glitches out most days where the 3rd monitor doesn't properly apply the Night Light setting. So I turn it off and on to fix it. The full blue brightness is awful and definitely harsh on my nighttime eyes. I'm not sure I could believe it's placebo
• NedF 8mo ago
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• refulgentis 8mo ago
  It is a placebo, it is an aesthetic thing. It is not something that helps anything at all physically. This was always well known. It didn't matter 5 years ago, 10 years ago, when OS added it. Easier to let it go than argue. But with HDR, it matters enormously people are well educated on this. Monitors are approximately light bulbs, and we've gone from staring into a 25W light bulb to a 200W one. (source: color scientist, built Google's color space) > What is the authors problem lol? It feels a lot better on eyeballs to use warm light things. Why does he care? I think it's better to avoid stuff like this. Been here 16 years and a flippant "whats his problem" "lol" and "why does he care" is 99th percentile disrespectful. It's not about what you're arguing, its just such a fundamental violation of what I perceive as the core tenant of HN, "come with curiosity." You are clearly curious, just, expressing it poorly.
  • RupertSalt 8mo ago
    username checks out
    • refulgentis 8mo ago
      Hahaha in my 37 years I don't think anyones mentioned looking it up, cheers. I chose it when I was 8 by flipping open my mom's 2000 page tome of a Merriam Websters, closing my eyes, and putting my finger on the page.
  • wtetzner 7mo ago
    > It is not something that helps anything at all physically. That's a pretty strong claim to make.
    • refulgentis 7mo ago
      It's not a strong claim. It's a settled one. The literature on blue light filters and screen-emitted blue light at display intensities is clear and has been for years, even if approaching it from first principles isn't convincing, or the first principles aren't known. The thing about color science is that everyone has eyes, so everyone assumes they already have the full picture. One can experience warm light feeling "nicer," and the jump to "this is physically helping me" feels so self-evident that anyone saying otherwise must be the one making a strong claim. But "I prefer the aesthetic" and "this is physiologically beneficial" are two completely different statements, and only one of them survives controlled study. I don't care if people use night shift. I'm not trying to take anyone's warm tint away. But we are now in an era where consumer displays are pushing luminance levels that are physically, measurably significant - not "I feel like it's bright" significant, but "this is a fundamentally different amount of light entering your eye" significant. Getting the basics right matters now in a way it didn't when we were all staring into dim LCDs and the worst case was people shifting white balance so the color temperature was incandescent, not D65.
• schiffern 8mo ago
  Aggravatingly, you can't set Night Shift to actually be on 24/7. It always has a "seam" where it fades off and then turns back on. One trick is to schedule this as a bedtime reminder to put down the phone for the night (phone fasting).
  • InMice 8mo ago
    I kind of despise that part about nightshift, since i almost always like to keep it at medium anytime indoors and during winter. But in the later evening I want it max, and when i got to bed i want it even more. And ive always despised flux for that too. It's even worse since a lot of times i sleep in two phases each night and it doesnt allow to change the length of night time. So dumb. In a way it's mildly frustrating, but also slightly insane to me that some of these things are so limiting in control. I cant just be given a simple on/off toggle? There is a project manager(s), paid millions collectively that sit in a room and decide "No, you cannot keep nightshift on, it will turn off at 7 AM every morning." Like... WTF. Stuff like this just keeps on getting worse and worse - and more and more common. Ive created shortcuts to jump directly to night settings and a shortcut to enable color filters. Still...
    • nandomrumber 8mo ago
      Can’t f.lux be controlled from the command line? I seem to recall it can. If so, you should be able to cron it to do whatever you want. I was using redshift on Linux for a while and had some aliases set to trigger various settings.
      • InMice 7mo ago
        Ive never been aware of that and when I look it's just forum posts of people asking more than once with no reply.
        • nandomrumber 7mo ago
          I can’t quite reach a Mac from where I’m sitting at the minute, maybe someone can try invoking f.lux from the command line.
• MBCook 8mo ago
  Is the author arguing anything about eye strain? The word “strain“ doesn’t even appear on the page. I think they’re purely talking about the idea that cutting back on blue light will help you sleep better. Nothing else. Why would the author care? Honestly it does seem like one of those junk science things that popped up a couple years ago that all of a sudden was everywhere. I literally remember comments here on hacker news from people saying Apple was killing people because they were blocking F.lux and didn’t have night shift yet. Yes they were the most hyperbolic, but they were there. I kind of like Night Shift too, for similar reasons. But I don’t think it ever did anything for my sleep. Nor did I ever expect it to.
• simoncion 7mo ago
  > What is the authors problem lol? I'm not the author, but every time I've seen Night Shift (and things like it) being used, they've done a grand job of royally fucking up the colors of whatever's on screen. > It feels a lot better on eyeballs to use warm light things. That's, like, your opinion, man. The lights in my house are all 5000K lights, and I love it. I expect you'd get way more out of reducing the brightness of your screen [0] than fucking with its colors. So many people seem to love having searingly-bright screens shining into their faces... I don't get the fascination. [0] If you've got the monitor's brightness at minimum and it's still too bright, then there are software controls to further reduce it.
  • disillusioned 7mo ago
    I respect that other people have the right to their opinion, but 5000K lights 24/7 is so completely insane to me. How? How do you get by with "dentist office mall kiosk" lighting blaring every hour of the day? I have an adaptive Lifx bulb that changes from 5000K during the day and then shifts down to 3000K at night, before tapering down to 2700K for overnight and it's amazing. 5000K in the corner of a dark room is just so disjointed and intense and upsetting to me, if I stay at an Airbnb for more than a night or two and there are daylight bulbs installed, I'll literally buy replacement bulbs and change them out.
  • wtetzner 7mo ago
    > they've done a grand job of royally fucking up the colors of whatever's on screen. Pretty sure that's the point?
• tuetuopay 7mo ago
  Well he goes on to rant about how it changes the colors displayed by the monitor, so a publisher cannot show the intended color (cyan in the example). Except he completely ignores that’s actually expected for a cyan object to be duller at night: it’s the albedo of the object and the perceived color will dramatically changed between daylight and nightlight. So the screen is more contextually correct by toning down cyan, and the colors we perceive will match (and reinforce) the circadian rythm: the user will recognize cyan. Of course, doing color-sensitive work should not be done with such filters.
• HumblyTossed 7mo ago
  It's not. I managed optical labs (the one hour kind) while getting my BSCpE. One thing I always used for my personal glasses for studying (the ones with an additional +.50 diopter for helping my reading - but that is another post), is about a 5% solid brown tint on the lenses to make the paper just a little less white.