What happens when someone flashes a torch right at your face? You would be blinded for some while before the eye can adjust to the normal lighting around. This is what happens when we work on computers or laptops at night. The computer screens are normally set to emit very bright blue light which is suited for work during the day but as night arrives the computer screen would be brighter than the lighting around which strains the eyes and spoils the sleep when one goes to sleep after working on computer.
As I am someone who currently spends atleast an hour looking at this screen during night, just changing the brightness of the computer screen was not the solution. So I did a bit of web search and surprising found a simple freeware named ‘f.lux’.
I downloaded and installed f.lux and I must say I am impressed with what this small application can do. It runs in the system tray and starts up during system start up. The application makes the computer display warmer by changing to a lower temperature very much like Halogen which results in a orangish colored screen. Even though initially it felt a bit odd, but after two days my eyes got adjusted to it.
The website of f.lux describes the software as:
“During the day, computer screens look good—they’re designed to look like the sun. But, at 9PM, 10PM, or 3AM, you probably shouldn’t be looking at the sun. F.lux fixes this: it makes the color of your computer’s display adapt to the time of day, warm at night and like sunlight during the day.”
F.lux screenshot
F.lux has settings option for setting the location and lighting. The location setup helps f.lux identify the time and appropriately change the screen temperature as night approaches. The lighting option allows to configure the temperature, I have personally liked and set it to be 3400K at night and 5000K during the day time.
There have been times when I am doing some image editing when I have had to disable f.lux (as working on images when looking with orange tint is difficult), f.lux has this too covered by providing a option to disable it for an hour.
To conclude, I must say I have got so much used to this application that now I feel really odd if I have to disable it for sometime. This is one of those applications which cannot be shown using screenshot and you need to use it yourself to see the effect. Go ahead and give this application a try if you work on computers at night.
Website: F.lux - Better lighting…for your computer.