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Comment by dsr_ | Hacker News Reader

... but I don't put a 100% brightness screen in front of my eyes at night. Do people really do that? Don't they know how to adjust brightness?

Indoors, I use about 30% brightness. As the day gets dimmer, that slides down to about 25%. If I'm reading something in bed, I start at about 10% and as my eyes adapt, go down to 1%. When I'm finding it hard to keep my eyes open, I take that as my signal to go to sleep. Am I ridiculously unusual?

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This isn't weird at all. I'm jealous of your 1%. The default low on my phone is maybe like 5-10% (I don't know how to check this), and it feels crazy bright when I'm in bed.

What phone are you using?

If you're on Android, I recommend Screen Filter[1] which will draw a semi transparent overlay on top of nearly everything (depending on the phone and/or OS version, it might not dim the status bar, bottom navigation buttons, lock screen, etc.). I use it a lot when reading at night, because the lowest brightness setting on my phone is also too bright for dark-adapted eyes.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.haxor

Shades is also a good app on android for dimming the whole screen much darker than the default slider will go.

Wow, thanks a lot. Just tried it out and I'm loving it so far. I really appreciate the default reversion in case the slider is set too low, as well as the non-linear percentage slider allowing for fine-grained control at lower brightness values.

For iPhones you can set a full screen “zoom” with low light filter on. It’s under Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> Zoom. Set the filter to Low Light, then turn on zoom, then double tap with three fingers to zoom out all the way.

It can be beneficial to suppose a perfectly spherical cow.

You aren't unusual for trying to prevent your eyes from being harmed. If you were, an article which helps inform on the topic of eye care would not be popular.

I do for videos because I notice that I just see a lot more. Turning down the brightness is like turning down the light in the room that was filmed in. That's both on OLED and on LCD screens (wish I could go back to OLED, though, but it has gotten fairly rare among cheaper phones).

Some people do it, yes. My girlfriend used to have her phone at 100%. Personally I use f.lux and the lowest setting.

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