[aethrum]

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 the authors problem lol? It feels a lot better on eyeballs to use warm light things. Why does he care?

[taeric]

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]

> 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

[DANmode]

Concur that most displays are set 25-50% too bright by default.

[tartoran]

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]

Can you elaborate on “no way back”?

[MBCook]

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]

> 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]

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]

> they've done a grand job of royally fucking up the colors of whatever's on screen.

Pretty sure that's the point?

[schiffern]

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]

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...

[tuetuopay]

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.

[himata4113]

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.

[HumblyTossed]

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.

[amelius]

Are you sure you are not also changing total luminance?

[refulgentis]

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.

[metalliqaz]

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

[thenewnewguy]

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).

[jack_pp]

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.

[geoduck14]

>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

[bob1029]

> 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

[taco_emoji]

> 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.

[refulgentis]

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.

[wtetzner]

> It is not something that helps anything at all physically.

That's a pretty strong claim to make.

[RupertSalt]

username checks out

[KaiserPro]

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.

[cpburns2009]

Blue light filtering lenses come at a premium. You don't accidentally get them.

[robinsonb5]

If you wait long enough cataracts will give you that for free.

[nsxwolf]

I love Night Shift.