Change your color temperature to fix your sleep patterns | Hacker News Reader

Change your color temperature to fix your sleep patterns

stereopsis.com

56 pointssrgseg22 comments

I tried out f.lux a while ago. The problem is, a 'warm' screen really doesn't look very nice, and after a few late nite coding sessions I disabled it. I've found it much more effective to just turn the brightness down at night.

For the iPhone and iPad, it seems like when you turn the brightness down past a certain point it stops being an attention grabbing shiny object, and just turns into another, boring thing. Weird I know, but try it.

Hm, is there something like this for the iPhone?

That would be pretty cool. I find it pretty annoying to adjust the brightness constantly on my iPhone.

Settings > General >Accessibility > Triple-click Home = White/Black

See "White On Black" @ http://www.apple.com/accessibility/iphone/vision.html

SMS looks great when at the movies this way or reading in bed.

You can also assign a triple-click of the Home button to toggle this feature.

Sadly, it also has the side effect of making the dash and a lot of random apps about 10x brighter.

If you jailbreak (don't do it without researching it), there's an app called SBSettings that adds a bunch of quick toggles, including brightness, in a snappy drop down menu accessible from inside any app.

Yup, very handy. I have this installed. I still wish there was some custom fine-grained controls that the user can set for their own preferences (based on brightness of their surroundings). I would definitely pay for some app that does this.

"I've found it much more effective to just turn the brightness down at night"

Same, but I just use Compiz Negative for that. Here's HN side-by-side, with Negative activated on the right, deactivated on the left:

http://imgur.com/HMAgn.png

You can toggle it instantly with whatever key combination you want to use, and can also Negative your entire desktop with different shortcut.

Compiz Grid + Compiz Negative are what keep me from moving to Xmonad or Awesome, <3 them.

For mac users: control-option-command-8.

Now, if there was a way to only invert luminosity without trashing aliasing.

Bonus tip for users on Mac OS X: try pressing ctrl+option+command+8. I find that really handy if I'm using my laptop when it's dark and I hit a webpage that's blindingly white.

Oh man I forgot about this! Baddest-Assed. Feature. Ever. I just did it on my girlfriend's machine while she was out of the room. Don't worry, I'll probably revert it for her soon enough.

So I tried flux for about three weeks and it didn't really seem to affect me. Reading/working by candle at night actually helped me more, though still not a lot.

I'm experimenting with one of these right now:

http://www.amazon.com/Philips-goLITE-BLU-Therapy-Device/dp/B...

I use it while I read in the morning. The idea is to go for lots of blue exposure in the mornings rather than amber at night as a way to shift my circadian rhythm. I may report on its efficacy once I've had enough time with it (if I ever get around to building a new site). My sleep patterns aren't as bad as a lot of people who use a screen excessively, but I'm working toward shifting my wake up time to very early.

Very cool - giving it a try. I just wish it worked on the street lamp outside my window.

From what I understand, color temperature can have a huge effect on your health. When I worked at an architecture firm, I attended several lectures by our lighting designer, who explained that some studies linked being exposed to the wrong color temperatures at the wrong times (like if your city's street lamps are daylight) to a variety of health problems, including cancer. Sorry, couldn't find a reference for this; but here is a study related to color temperature's effects on the circadian system: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1779263/

I just discovered this and can't believe no-one has posted the URL for this before.

The warm color temperature really helps me control my sleep cycle, which can be pretty bizarre with the amount of time I spend staring at my monitor.

you can repost urls after a few weeks.

http://searchyc.com/f.lux

I've been using f.lux for months. Not sure if its affected my sleep cycle but it does reduce glare to eyes. I already keep the brightness at the dimmest (osx), so i can't reduce it further at night. why is everyone putting a dot after the f ?

It looks like they are following the author's lead. I imagine they are trying to highlight the wordplay in the application's name. Where the light (lux) levels that your monitor gives off changes over time or is "in flux". It also makes SEO easier for a common word like flux.

Red Shift is an alternative for those working on Ubuntu. I couldn't get f.lux to work properly and Red Shift mimics the job without a hitch.

http://jonls.dk/redshift/

Some really good discussion about f.lux on this other HN post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1832339

I'm using f.lux right now. I'm pretty sure I first heard of it on HN, not sure why the URL hasn't been posted before though.

I've been using this for weeks. It's 5:30 am.

This is quite nice.

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