In 2016, Apple released a revolutionary new feature called Night Shift, which reduces the amount of blue light emitted by a device’s display. According to Apple, “Many studies show that exposure to bright-blue light in the evening can affect your circadian rhythms and make it harder to fall asleep.” However, until additional new display technologies come of age that are similar to Apple’s Night Shift, having to manually adjust your display’s light levels is the best option for now to combat the negative effects of blue light exposure at night. Although, you could shell out the big bucks for a pair of glasses with a blue-specific notch filter. Or, if you don’t mind wearing a pair of orange-tinted sunglasses – you could go down that road. Our suggestion to combat the negative effects of blue light exposure is to read an article written by Dr. Raymond M. Soneira titled, “Watching Displays at Night.”
To improve existing displays for watching at night so that they don’t adversely affect sleep requires not only significantly reducing the display Brightness, which is easy, but then making sure that the least possible amount of Blue light in the 460-490nm spectral range is being emitted by the display or is blocked in some other way. There are several approaches for doing this…
Adjusting Existing Displays at Night
It turns out that the smartest and best way for modifying and adjusting the display’s Blue light output for existing displays at night is by using the display’s own hardware and modifying the software.
f.lux for Displays at Night
The first software application to work on the Blue light issue for displays at night was developed by f.lux back in 2009. They have remained a major innovator in this area and the f.lux website has lots of information on this evolving topic. They provide free downloads of the f.lux App for OSX and Windows, and also for Linux and some Android devices.
Apple’s Night Shift
Apple’s introduction of a new adjustable night mode for displays called Night Shift in iOS 9.3 for recent model iPads and iPhones is a major industry-wide and worldwide development in getting this important issue recognized and appreciated by consumers, manufacturers and researchers. Apple’s enormous market power not only brings attention to this important issue but it will certainly require all other manufacturers to respond in kind…
Sources: Watching Displays at Night | DisplayMate
Photo credit: ThinkStock
