This study mentions blue light as from smartphones as a problem. My phone has a blue light filter which I have on all the time. Linux gnome desktop also has one for late night coding sessions.
Not sure if joking, but in case you're not familiar with the product... more like light-brown tinted?
It only blocks some small-ish percentage of the blue light. Really roughly, I could describe it as replacing flourescent bulbs with some warm LED bulbs on your entire vision. Just a very light warm tinge to everything.
I stopped noticing it about 20 minutes after putting the glasses with the filtering on. Now I don't know how I lived without it. If I take my glasses off and try and look at my computer screen I feel like I need to squint it's so harsh.
the GP solution puzzles me too. i don't want this to be the solution. i wear glasses and my eyes are already damaged and now i need to filter out the color blue? what about we start making better monitors and screens instead?
That would be great. When they're done replacing every screen in existence, if they could replace all lightbulbs in places people visit during the evening with warmer bulbs (hotels, common spaces, street lights, etc), the lights in all the new car dashboards, everyone's headlights, every cheap piece of electronics that's covered with blue status LEDs...
Or you can just filter out some of the light right in front of your eyes and achieve a workable solution today.
As an added bonus, I think you'll find it actually reduces your eye issues. Tried out the filtering basically because I couldn't think of a reason not to and the first time I put the new glasses on it felt like I'd stopped squinting and relaxed my eyes for the first time in years. I get way fewer eye-strain induced headaches now.
My anecdote: I got glasses this year specifically to counteract astigmatism related to the past 20 years of looking at screens for 8+ hours/day. I was beginning to get headaches every day from working. I didn't even know my eyesight was suffering until someone suggested I go get an exam.
When I saw the blue-light filter option, I jumped at it because I knew I'd be spending most of my time wearing glasses looking at a computer screen anyway.
The blue filter they treat lenses with is very mild, though. It's maybe a 20% reduction. I now wear the glasses all the time even though I don't really need to, and the filter isn't noticeable at all.
I came here to say the same thing, ever since I've gotten a new pair of glasses with blue filter coating, I don't get that match eye strain and headaches in the office. you get used to them immediately and can see the difference in many places you wouldn't expect.
I had my glasses with the blue light filter lenses for a couple of years, the problem is that I wear it all the time and I got used with it very easy, but the entire world was skewed. Also the monitors were looking yellow, an ugly kind of yellow, I switched back to regular lenses and I am perfectly fine with it.
But then you have to wear indoor glasses which is no fun. Light shift is baked into MacoOS, iOS, and Windows at this point, so there is no excuse to fall victim to these instagram adverts selling these cheap glasses.
How do you personally find the balance between blue light keeping you awake verse mental stimulation keeping you awake? I don't do any math or coding in the ~2 hours before bed, as a general rule.
I got the filtered glasses mostly because of the purported benefits regarding eye strain, so I hadn't put a lot of thought into trying to compare the effects on sleep.
Definitely wouldn't discount blue light having some effect, but I'm totally on the same page as you here regarding limiting stimulation and I'd have a hard time believing anyone that claimed lighting had anything even close to the effect that other habits did.
Had trouble sleeping for years. Made my bed and bedroom a place for sleep and only sleep. When I go to bed the phone goes on do not disturb, there's no computer/TV/etc in the room at all and no clock (I can't look at a clock without thinking of all the things I have to do!). I just get into bed and lay there until I'm asleep. Some days I'll try and read a little, but I find these days that I don't make it very far at all before I'm asleep.
Haven't even had to go as far as limiting activities before bed or anything all that much. At some point my body and brain got conditioned to sleep when in bed, so it's usually a pretty painless process now.
These things are incredible. I used to turn it on for my eyes, but i noticed that when on my laptop in bed, without it on, i wont feel tired at all. I turn nightshift on and suddenly i feel sleepy :)
Not only that, try to switch it on and off a couple of times. You'll see that when the blue light is ON after having used the blue filter for like a couple of seconds, you'll feel like someone punching your eyes!
It's almost like having a lamp in your face all the time in the night - of course you can't sleep! We just got used to it. Now thankfully someone has implemented such filters.
SunsetScreen is good if you live at an extreme latitude. Don't know if this has been addressed in recent updates, last time I used flux it wanted to start dimming my screen at 18.00 in the winter and close to midnight in the summer.
At the time, f.lux's devs seemed completely opposed to any kind of adjustable schedule for people who cannot follow the sun.
I guess this varies from person to person. Maybe it is a problem if you have trouble sleeping anyway, but as far as I'm concerned, I guess the blue light just keeps me awake as long as I need to finish whatever I'm doing, after that I usually have no trouble at all going to sleep. When using a blue-light-reduced "night mode" however, I find I can barely keep my eyes open...
There are special Gunnar glasses that seem to work well by reflecting blue light - they completely eliminated any eye strain I felt while coding in the night. Coupled with natural light lamp, it's a great combo for a winter coder.
