Create a shortcut for even lower phone brightness

[roughly]

The other useful vision accessibility setting is "Color Filters" - I've used this one two different ways.

Currently, I've got it set to put a reddish-orange cast on the screen - like a "turbo night shift" more similar to the depth F.lux will let you take your mac. You can use the Shortcuts app to create a shortcut to enable the filter, and then set that to turn on at certain points, so around 10 at night my phone goes from normal night shift to a much more aggressive red/orange-shifted profile. The effect at night is dramatic - the phone becomes much less jarring to look at. The OLED screens are great for this, too - a reduction in blue color is a reduction in blue light. The shortcut turns itself back off at 6am.

The other filter you can apply is a black & white filter, which removes all color from the screen. Give this a try for an hour and then turn it off - you'll be amazed at the riot of attention-grabbing color app makers are throwing at you. I've found it's a lot easier not to get sucked into the phone hole when the UI is set to black & white - the whole device feels calmer and less urgent.

If you haven't spent time in the accessibility settings, though, go exploring. It's where Apple puts all the good stuff.

[andrepd]

The alternative to black and white stuff is simply: curate what you have in your phone. Uninstall all social media (yes all). Keep only constructive content on your device. No useless apps sending notifications, no feed of brain-rotting content at one tap on you homescreen.

I keep:

- a carefully curated list of high-quality channels on youtube (on newpipe, so no tracking and no echo chamber personalised recommendations)

- a carefully curated list of high-quality subreddits

- hackernews

And that's it. Just cut off the junk, grayscale wont save you

[MadnessASAP]

Just turned on the grayscale, take it for a spin.

I'm not surprised the good features are hidden behind Accessibility. I'd argue most other features on a phone are designed for someone else's benefit. Albeit cleverly disguised as benefits for the user.

[eggplantemoji69]

I do the exercise of imagining the colors one would be exposed to as a hunter gatherer (context in which humans developed, 90% of human history), and there would seldom be anything vibrant (sunsets, sky, plants/flowers) when compared to today. I would imagine black + white on the phone would assist in more optimally calibrating one's dopaminergic pathways / receptors.

[otteromkram]

Android (at least version 12) has a bedtime mode that converts the display to B&W. There's also an eye comfort shield feature.

However, I stick to using the Blue Light Filter Android app, which is amazing. Not sure if it's available for iOS.

[ckosidows]

B&W mode is great until you're trying look at photos or watch videos. I wish there was a setting in the operating system to remove color from UI elements and not videos or images. Or turn B&W on/off for certain apps, like photos and youtube.

And I guess not having color for videos is maybe the point, but I can't manage to use it at all if I can't watch videos with color.

[chrisdalke]

I do the same thing with a shortcut of Triple Click side button -> Color Filters. You can set this up in Accessibility and it will let you tint your phone to be nearly 100% red pixels.

[rimunroe]

I've been using a similar shortcut like this for a while on iOS for bedtime reading. I hadn't seen the "reduce whitepoint" option before, but by setting the shortcut to "zoom" you can get a similar (possibly slightly dimmer?) effect. The trick is to make it so the zoom shortcut dims the unzoomed area, and then set the unzoomed area to the entire screen. I just checked, and the effects of those two settings stack to make things quite dark.

[jihadjihad]

Been doing this for several years now and it works great (triple click the Home button to dim the screen), but I can't help but wonder if a standalone setting in iOS wouldn't be a better option.

[DitheringIdiot]

That's interesting, I'll look into it. Using the method outlined in the article I can get it to the point of being almost not being able to see the screen. Though at night once your eyes adjust, I think going even dimmer could be useful.

[kylebenzle]

The nonsense Apple users go to for the simplest of features is always mind blowing to me. If they were paying 1/2 the price I'd get it but Apple products just make no sense to me.

[crystaln]

Even better for bed time (and even stargazing) is the add a red mode. I have had my power button triple click toggle this for many years.

It can be hard to operate if you turn the blue leds off entirely but you don’t need much.

https://www.blockbluelight.com/blogs/news/how-to-turn-your-i....

[dylan604]

I use some of the astro apps like Star Walk and the like, and there's a glaring issue with their internal red modes. When you need to input text, it uses the OS keyboard which is no longer red filtered. It is very jarring when out in the dark.

Do the filters you're suggesting also tint the keyboard?

[rpastuszak]

heh, just made a comment about a similar approach: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38165214

[NelsonMinar]

I would love an Android app that lets me reliably set the brightness to 1 or 2%. Not 3%, not 0%. The default slider makes this nearly impossible. I've tried a few programs to do this and none worked well.

[chromakode]

On Pixel phones you can assign the extra dim toggle to pressing both volume keys at once. It's also accessible on many Android phones via a quick settings tile.

[bscphil]

LineageOS lets you activate it on a schedule, e.g. 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. I think maybe stock Android does too?

This is one of the many areas that Samsung phones suck. For many versions, and for older phones that are mostly stuck on those versions, they hide this Android feature entirely. I managed to get it sort-of working by figuring out the intent name and making a shortcut for it in my launcher. (If you have a brand new Samsung, I don't think this is an issue.)

[carb]

You can also (at least on Samsung phones) adjust the "Extra dim shortcut"!

I have it set it to "Tap Accessibility button", which is a small person-shaped icon that sits at the very bottom right of my screen, to the right of the Back button.

[CarVac]

Ooo, thanks for this. I just set the grayscale filter to a gesture (double finger swipe up from the bottom).

[globular-toast]

The best quality of life improvement I've made in the past few years is to break the phone in bed habit and start a reading habit.

[justin_oaks]

I also found that reading books at night helps me get to sleep better, though I still use my phone for reading them.

I suspect that the light of a phone screen matters less than the content you view on the phone.

[rpastuszak]

Ha, I've been working on some similar projects in the past couple of weeks! (Although I was aiming for a much, much darker screen.)

Here are my design/dev notes:

https://untested.sonnet.io/Obsidian+for+Vampires

https://untested.sonnet.io/Night+Rider

The idea to work on this was partially inspired by stargazing apps, e.g. NightSky.

I'm still not 100% if these experiments are worth pursuing (I need to pay rent) but if you'd like to see a tool like this, or if you have any use-cases I didn't mention, please let me know.

[moneywoes]

Is there a similar trick for mac / windows laptops?

Would really help working late at night

[citruscomputing]

For Mac, Lunar (brew install --cask lunar) gives "sub-zero dimming" that works perfectly -- it hooks into the brightness keys and gives a whole second, lower menu. The lowest setting is actually too dim (as any lowest non-zero brightness setting should be...) Works for external monitors, too!

[timenova]

There's no Reduce White Point on Mac as far as I am aware. However, you can use the fantastic Lunar [0] app to achieve this, as it supports "Sub-Zero Dimming".

To use it, I think you just need to start Lunar, and then press the Reduce Brightness button on your keyboard until it goes below the minimum Mac allows.

[0] https://lunar.fyi

[w-ll]

https://www.pangobright.com/ on windows is great, albeit a little weird. I think it makes a transparent always on top window that doesnt take events. System right click menus and stuff seem to no be under it.

But I still like this over flux and the likes

[bajsejohannes]

https://lunar.fyi/ can do that (as well as control brigthness on external monitors)

[jt2190]

I’ve done exactly this for years now. I’m not sure if it actually reduces “blue light” enough to prevent me from triggering my brain’s “it’s daytime” mode, but I figure it’s at least allowing my pupils to stay more dilated (better night vision)

Edit: I don’t make a habit of looking at my phone in bed. In addition to the “blue light” there are other things that contribute to wakefulness, such as any voluntary muscle movement (scrolling and tapping) and even just keeping your conscious brain active, which I find I do when I’m interacting with my phone.

[andyjohnson0]

This is good advice, but I prefer something that automatically dims and reduces blue light for me. That way I don't have to remember to do it.

f.lux on Windows and Mac, and Twilight on Android, are what work for me.

https://justgetflux.com/

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.urbandroid...

[adamomada]

It’s built-in to MacOS for years now, look for Night Shift in Display settings

[Ajay-p]

This is excellent information! I use my phone in bed, maybe too much, and wished for long time it could go lower. The Kindle app on my iPad will go lower so I knew it was possible. Thank you!

[kylebenzle]

By "information" you mean the idea that a screen brightness can be adjusted? I am honestly confused if you thought before reading this that pixels were somehow limited by how dim they could get?

[pmontra]

I have no extra dim settings on my Android phone but I've been using Screen Filter since 2011. It's a sub half MB app last updated in 2013 that paints a dark overlay on the screen and makes it darker than the minimum darkness reachable from the brightness slider. Its darkness is configurable and it's pretty much everything it does.

[orev]

The zoom trick is how you used to have to do it, but then they added reduce white point. When you enable reduce white point, a slider is shown that lets you adjust it, all the way down to almost completely off. I can’t imagine needing to layer zoom on top of it once you reach that level.

[rimunroe]

Oh that's good to know! I'll switch to using that instead

[OGWhales]

On a similar note, you can use the shortcuts app on iphone to make a flashlight toggle that can be set much lower than what can be set through control panel.

https://i.imgur.com/kNTTlsu.png

[vladvasiliu]

It’s hard to compare how low they go, but long press on the flashlight icon in the control panel allows controlling the brightness.

[alin23]

Woaaah, always wanted this for searching stuff after bedtime without waking up my wife and dog. Thanks!!!

[3seashells]

Wish the auto adjust brightness would track pupils and detect readability that way.

[ComputerGuru]

I miss this from the original iPhone (or somewhere around iPhone 4) where the system would let you just turn the backlight all the way to off (though it could be hard to turn it back up if you turned off auto brightness).

[alanbernstein]

Moon reader for Android has a built-in feature to set extra-low brightness using something like a full-screen gray/alpha overlay. That, plus white text on a full-screen black background, makes for an extremely dim screen.

It only works for reading ebooks (or whatever you can open in the app), which IMO is a huge benefit. I don't want to be scrolling nonsense websites in bed, but I do think a smartphone ebook reader is the least-bright, most comfortable and most ergonomic way to read in bed.

[charcircuit]

>so it's odd that manufacturers choose the default minimum brightness to be brighter than the sun.

The default brightness of a phone is several hundred nits where the sun is 1.6 billion nits.

[einherjae]

To quote Einstein: “everything is relative”

[calt]

Yeah I was really perplexed by that line. I had to stop and scratch my head.

Maybe they mean, "brighter than daylight ambient light levels indoors"?

[eternauta3k]

With FBReader you can slide your finger along the left edge of the screen to adjust brightness, and it goes down to pretty darn dark.

[cowjan]

FYI for iOS users; instead of toggling this through the accessibility tap you can also set up a Shortcut that toggles the white point, or even just toggle it directly from Spotlight on the home screen by searching "white point" and tapping the switch