There has been growing noise the past few years about how using a screen late at night can be bad for us. Something about the blue light disrupts our circadian rhythm. There is substantial evidence that even if we don't have problems going to sleep, this disruption is happening and may be leading to other disorders. Some scientists are even speculating that the increase in depression and other mental disorders may be related to this. One you may have heard of, Andrew Huberman, who is a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford, talks about it and gives tons of research to back up his talks at his YouTube channel.

Nothing is conclusive and that's fine, that's how science works: by making a hypothesis based on observations, testing it, making more hypotheses, testing them, and so forth, until eventually we do arrive at some kind of conclusive proof that will enable us to address it. Science is slow, but it works.

That doesn't mean we can't take action on things now. Already many of the smartphone makers have introduced some kind of "screen warming" feature, that shifts the color temperature of the screen towards reds in the evening. This feature has made its way to some computers too, like the Mac. People seem pretty divided on this color-shift mode: some love it and some hate it. I think the thing many people who hate it don't realize is that it looks terrible if the ambient light in the room is bright, but if the room you are in is dark, this color shift looks a lot better and is easier on the eyes.

^{Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay}

Beyond the possible negative health consequence to blue light at night, red light has a huge advantage in that it doesn't disrupt our night vision. If your eyes are adjusted to darkness and you turn on a bright light you blind yourself, and then when you turn the bright light off you can't see anything again for a few minutes until your eyes reädjust to the dark. Red light doesn't have this effect.

This may be a evolutionary trait developed over long centuries of sitting at outdoor fires. Whatever the case may be, it's a cool ability and a cool effect to red light.

Anyway, I want to make two suggestions. The first is an app for your PC.

PCs

Go get an app called Flux. This app is open-source, available for Windows, Linux, and Mac. Using this app you can adjust the color shift of your screen to a much greater extent than the OS might enable natively. I have my screen turning down to only 1200K at night, which makes the screen look basically like a campfire: all reds and oranges. Again, it looks terrible if my room is bright, but if all the lights are off or dimmed, it looks great and is much easier on my eyes.

If you are a gamer or trying to watch a movie then obviously this is no good, but if you are just reading or typing, this kind of color shift is really pleasant. And it may, again depending on the way the science goes or continues to go, be healthier for you. The really nice thing about Flux is it is a very gradual change. You can configure how gradual, but by default the change is fairly slow.

Smartphones

As with PCs, I don't think the smartphone color-shift settings are aggressive enough. Android can use Flux so if you use that phone, you are in luck. But iPhone is out of luck. There is however a very nice workaround.

Go to settings and scroll down to accessibilities.

Tap Display & Text Size

Scroll down to Color Filters and tap it.

On the next screen, flick the Color Filters switch to enable it, touch color tint, and drag both sliders entirely to the right.

^{It will look like this, but your screen will look red at this stage. The next two screenshots will also be red for you. Have no fear. For the last step we will enable the ability to toggle this red filter on and off.}

Next, hit back two times to return to this (now red) screen:

Scroll down to Accessibility Shortcut

Touch Color Filters to enable it. Now whenever you triple-click the power button you will toggle this red filter.

It may not be as gentle of a transition as Flux offers, nor is it automatic, but it works well. Even if you don't want to use a red screen late at night, you might set it to this red screen when you go to sleep so if you wake up to use the toilet and touch the phone to see the time during the night, you preserve your night vision.

If you are curious to try either Flux or this iPhone workaround, give yourself some time to get used to it. A red screen may seem weird at first, but if you allow a few days, you might get used to it. Just remember, if the room is light then a red screen will probably look terrible to you and will make it harder to read, but if all the lights are dim or low, it will probably look much better. Give it a try!

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David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org.