Phones need 'bed mode' to protect sleep

Not just for Linux users: If you are using f.lux on windows but wish that you could control the temperate on demand (rather than it being automatic according to the current time) switch to Redshift and don't look back.

Kudos to the BBC for increasing awareness of this issue with non-technical device users, who will need manufacturers to implement bedtime mode as a factory-installed feature.

Previous industries have sold products with negative health impacts, with changes eventually coming from consumer pushback, government regulation and/or class-action lawsuits.

There must be at least one mainstream device manufacturer who has a large advertising budget and can take a leadership position by implementing bedtime mode and advertising the health benefits.

I haven't done any mobile development, so forgive my ignorance. But the concept of a program not being "allowed" on my device is bizarre to me.

This is the obvious change immediately made by anyone whose health is affected. If the lowest level of brightness were sufficient, users would not need to seek out apps like f.lux.

Actually a bed mode will make a substantial difference.

Looking at phones or laptops or whatever screens at nighttime suppresses melatonin, which leads to people not feeling sleepy when they should, which makes them much more likely to continue looking at their screen than if they became as tired as normal.

It’s certainly possible to stay up doing something without blue light (e.g. reading by candlelight or a dim incandescent flashlight), but blue light makes a huge difference, and actively fights people’s ability to exercise self control.

Working to change habits is all well and good, but instead of telling someone who habitually binges on candy and cookies to stop eating any snacks at all, period, it would be a more successful intervention to take the candy and cookies away and fill their refrigerator with carrot sticks.

Do you have it set so that it changes colors gradually? It's much easier to get used to if you have it change over the course of an hour instead of instantly.

It seems to be worse with the modern f.lux mode than classic f.lux.

If you allow your eyes to adapt, the yellowness really isn’t a big deal, unless you’re doing something color sensitive like making art. Just stop worrying about precisely what colors are on screen.

Even if you’re casually looking at photographs, watching a television show, or playing a game, your eyes can compensate pretty well for a significant reduction in the amount of blue light, and you can have a perfectly acceptable experience.

Note, you’ll also want to dim or turn off other lights at night. In particular white LEDs of CCT ≥4000K are terrible at night, both wrecking night vision and disrupting sleep rhythm.

If you’re in an otherwise dark room, you can turn your display brightness as low as it will go and turn f.lux to its orangest possible setting and still browse the web, answer emails, write code, etc. perfectly fine. At such an extreme setting you might not be able to effectively enjoy photographs or movies anymore, but maybe right before bed isn’t the best time to look at photographs anyway.

If you turn it on slowly enough you wot notice until you look at another screen.

I had the same experience when I spent an hour in a white tent. When I stepped outside everything looked super blue, and I had not noticed until then that the light in the tent was in fact super yellow.

You did not read the article... It's not about putting down the phone, it's about the light it emits.

Super hard, and you know it. Plenty people's willpower is basically depleted by night time.

My own little lifehack here is that my phone stays downstairs, in the charger, when I go to bed. I use an old phone without wifi or SIM to act as a simple, programmable, non-annoying alarm clock. It means that by the time I'm down, I don't need to resist to urge to just check HN one more time.

As other said it is not necessarily about the using the phone it's about the light emitted from screens of all our devices. T he issue also applies to using other screens at night. Like watching TV right until you go to bed, or even in bed. I guess using your phone in bed to set an alarm and whatnot is a more common case and thus is used as the example.

Implicit in your comment is the idea that no one should ever have any legitimate reason to use a mobile device before going to bed. While I have no doubt many users have to check Facebook one more time or some other compulsive behavior that you imagine, there are users who need to set an alarm for the morning, check what they have to do tomorrow, or even check up on some mission-critical status for work.

Some adults use their phones before going to sleep in order to be non-infantile and responsible.

I sometimes like to read a book before going to sleep: it's always been a nice, calming activity for me. I also sometimes read books on my phone, and I think that's probably going to become more common (for me and in general) over time. Which of those is the "infantile, irresponsible" part?

Oh, sure. But how about infantile and/or irresponsible ones? I heard there are a lot of us here... ;)

It's not a matter of putting the phone down "before" sleep. That's easy. It's a matter of putting away all screens a full two hours before you want to sleep. That is an enormous pain, no matter how easy it is. And it's so easy to fix.

Twilight on Android works well.

There is something like f.lux for Android. It's called Twilight.

Lux is also an great option for Android!

I switched from twilight to cf.lumen the other day, it's vastly better as it properly colors your screen.

CyanogenMod has something equal to f.lux already built in. It's called LiveDisplay.

Orange safety glasses entirely block those wavelengths. This kind of thing: http://amzn.com/B003OBZ64M/

If looking through your glasses doesn’t make everything look significantly yellower/oranger than usual when you first put them on, then it’s not blocking too much blue light. You can try to find a spec sheet with the spectral transmission distribution to get a full idea.

I believe that discovery was made decades ago, given the stories I've come across of people who fell asleep to 'The Late Show' with Carson, back when that was the last broadcast of the day.

Ahh, here are two links which mention those days: http://www.salon.com/2014/02/18/how_jimmy_fallon_and_the_roo... and https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/w... .

Dictating what is "easy to do" is an insult to software producers everywhere. If you'd like to know more about how "simple" things can take lots of effort to deploy in heavily-used production software, consider reading Raymond Chen's Old New Thing blog for a while.

Your joke is sort of true. Snack foods generally have an excessively high ratio of palatability/satiation.

(I'd like to see it change because individuals make the choice, not by fiat, so let's not have an argument about it)

I and most of my acquaintances no longer have a traditional landline phone. My smartphone is the only way to contact me in an emergency. If friends or family need to reach me to extricate them from a bad situation or come to the hospital, etc., I want to be reachable. It's only happened a few times in my life, thankfully, but I don't like the idea of being completely unreachable until I wake up and turn my phone back on.

That said, I could turn off wifi and cellular data, but that's one more thing to remember to do every night. I suppose if you find the temptation overwhelming, it could be worth it though.

My point is just that turning off the phone is not as simple of a decision as you make it sound.

Precisely this.

I did find that it doesn't meet my needs exactly, however. I favorited a number of inbound numbers such as Pingdom and co-workers to allow for alerts to come through but it doesn't apply to SMS messaging. They simply get muted, even if the number is in your favorites. I had to turn off "Do Not Disturb" simply because overrides wouldn't be triggered by SMS messages.

I believe it should apply to both SMS and phone for the overrides.

No the article is talking about the blue light affecting hormone production. "Do not disturb" does nothing for that.