Ask HN: How do you prevent eyestrain with daily computer use?
Does anybody have any tricks to prevent eyestrain in day to day computer use?
* lighting position * Screen brightness * position to windows and many more I am sure.
* lighting position * Screen brightness * position to windows and many more I am sure.
125% DPI or 125% "zoom" depending on the OS/application help with eye strain massively, and it surprises me how few colleagues are willing to try it (e.g. "I can see perfectly, why would I increase text size?!").
Between that and lowering a monitor's brightness to below 50% (often around 35% depending on brand), are my biggest tips. Windows now has a blue light filter built right in (Settings -> System -> Display -> Night Light).
This is astonishingly effective at reducing eye strain. Even if you can read small text on your screen, it requires a lot of work by the muscles in your eyes to maintain the focus long term. Larger text means less precise focusing is required to be able to read the text.
But I think this is too dependent on monitor, system font, etc. to generalise.
There are some sources suggesting that all other things equal, black text on white is more legible too.
My daily driver runs NixOS, i3wm as my window manager, and I've changed the editor and themes of my most commonly used applications to work with the monitors. I recommend the investment.
https://dasung-tech.myshopify.com/products/dasung-e-ink-pape...
The prior generations perform adequately, but they require Dasung's software to change the modes and brightness. The modes change the contrast/refresh rate of the monitor. The third generation monitors doesn't need the software to adjust the modes/brightness.
Below is a review of their 3rd gen HD-FT mode. https://youtu.be/5pevlmk5kQs
I'm near sighted and the monitor starts getting blurry at just the right distance. I have glasses for nearsightedness that are focused very far out (the common case). Wearing them for constant work at arms length really tired my eyes out. So, I'd frequently work without my glasses, but hunch forward a little to make seeing things easier.
With glasses dedicated for computer work, I can read everything I need to, my body can stay in the position it should be, and my eyes don't get nearly as tired.
As a side benefit, the glasses help me focus in other areas of my life. I frequently wear them while cooking, and it helps me do one thing at time, as other stuff is blurry.
What I do have is an astigmatism. Getting glasses (it was free with my work insurance) made a huge difference in my ability to stare at the screen all day.
If you find yourself _ever_ squinting at the screen, go get glasses. Or if you feel your eyes get "dry". They're both likely symptoms of an astigmatism.
I can use my computer and phone without glasses fine, but after ~4 hours I start to feel fatigue. And text is _slightly_ crisper with glasses on.
And I did what burkemw3 did: Astigmatism-correcting glasses only.
But it was very difficult. I went to an optician to buy them, and they told me, I would not need them, so they won't sell them to me. When I am nearsighted, all my glasses should correct nearsightedness fully.
And to make it worse, they were not able to measure my astigmatism. The first one I went to measured 1.5 D cylinder and gave me such glasses, but that was a little blurry, so I went to several others and measured them and then said you have 20/20 vision, so everything is perfect. I finally found one who measured my eyes from scratch without taking the value of the old glasses and then he found 2.75 D cylinder, leading to a 30% better vision than 20/20.
However, some of the opticians had wavefront eye laser scanner. That is a really advanced method to measure directly how the eye affects lightwaves rather than trying different lenses. The devices measured that I actually need a 3.6D cylinder. But the opticians always discarded that measurement, because it was not possible that I had 20/20 vision if my glasses are two diopter too weak.
Anyways, since they did not sell me computer glasses, I bought them online, and just put zero for spherical value of the prescription. Although there seems to be something wrong, since I am always seeing sharper on one eye than the other. I also tried buying a stronger cylinder online to check it out, but that was not possible since the online sites did not sell any cylinder stronger than three diopter.
The other simple one is to just increase font size when you’re feeling strain. I’ll often change my font size when I’m in poorly lit conditions or if it’s the end of a long day.
I ordered a pair (via Zenni, just some regular polycarbonate lenses) that are at just the right optical power such that if I fully relax my eyes, objects 1 metre away are in focus. When my monitor is that far away, it's at optical infinity and very comfortable to look at for long stretches. It's a very noticeable difference: on the occasions that I forgot to put the task glasses on and wear my normal glasses by mistake, my eyes almost always end up feeling sore after a few hours.
I'm tempted to get another pair at 50 cm for laptop and phone use.
I discovered this decades ago at university. For a time, I switched to a large font, thinking naively that it would help with eye strain. But the problem became worse; my eyes became crazy tired, and it became obvious to me why: I could read the text no matter how tired my eyes were. Heck, I could stare at the screen without even blinking for minutes at a time, and still read the text. So I persisted in marathon hacking sessions without taking appropriate breaks.
I promptly went the opposite way and used the smallest font I could comfortably read with rested, relaxed eyes. Problem went away. This established a corrective feedback loop. Firstly, I had to blink in order to continue to read. That font size was not possible to read without blinking for a minute. Secondly, straining to read when tired didn't work; I just had to take a break.
I remember e.g. when heart failure was treated with beta-agonists (every doctor at lectures: "It makes sense! The heart is struggling, so we give it a boost!").
Then they did some studies and found that while the heart output increased, people were dying faster. So they decided to do the exact opposite and switch to beta-blockers (every doctor at lectures: "It makes sense! A dimmer candle burns for longer!").
Then they found out beta-blockers made things worse too. I have no idea what they do nowadays, but I'm sure doctors still have a rationalisation-by-analogy explanation for it, whatever that is.
* If you work on a laptop all day, buy an external screen. (Laptop always have small and often a shitty screen)
* Adjust the brightness and the contrast. Do a google search to find some colored images with instructions how to calibrate.
* Quick rules of thumb, you can always reduce brightness to 50% right away. Modern displays are extremely bright and the out of factory settings are insane, sometimes 80% or 100%, it's like starring at a lamppost.
* In terms of positioning. Your eyes should be at the level of the top of the screen. Large displays (24" and above) can go quite tall even with the feet at the lowest position, it might not be possible to do that, it's okay if your eyes are only at 3/4 of the top of the screen.
Good list tho.
Especially if what you're looking at is moving in any way on the screen.
Without going into specifics, the shortest way to get a good screen is probably to buy an IPS display (it's barely more expensive). Pretty sure all IPS display are at least okay.
The cheapest displays are TN because it's cheaper to manufacture, sadly that technology has very bad angle of vision, move a feet to the left and another feet and you'll see the image looking different, it also has a more limited rendering of colors. Not great.
Typically you realize how bad a screen is when you try to calibrate it (looking at a few pictures is enough, no need for expensive equipment). With a really shitty screen, you will notice that the display literally cannot render half the colors.
For example looking at a picture with 16 shades from pure white to pure black, the 4 first levels of white look the same.
Typically that's the part where you have to adjust brightness/contrast until it's showing a difference. If you have a really shitty screen, there's no settings where half the colors will render. The example above being extremely skewed toward bright white will slowly destroy your eyes, being too bright and removing details/contrasts.
It's likely much more common for people not to know or try to see how much difference settings can make.
Concensus among opticians and ophthalmologists is however still that the main cause for eye strain is focusing your eyes at a short distance for an extended period of time.
2) Place the top of the monitor at eye level
3) THE BIGGEST: The 20/20/20 rule. Every 20 minutes, look at an object 20 feet (6m) for 20 seconds.
These three changed my computing life forever, and for the better, especially since I'm on a computer 10 hours a day most days.
Laptop users- get an external screen or a laptop stand that allows the screen to follow those rules.
So if I have two monitors side by side I can have them a lot closer than if I had one ultrawide monitor?
Also, if you wear glasses, check your prescription. A while ago, I switched to what in the UK are called Occupational lenses. The bottom of the frame is for close-up (less than 30cm) and the upper half is objects that are about an arms length away - my screen position. This helped me sit further back from my monitor but still have good visibility. Before changing, the position where I could see the screen the best wasn't ergonomically good and if I sat with good posture I couldn't see fine detail so well. It only took a few days to get used to the vari-focus.
After years of doing this, I've come to change my opinion about this. I put the monitors so I see the middle of the screen. It means that my eyes are moving in every direction, and I'm less likely to bend my neck downwards, resulting in neck strain.
EDIT: This does result in the monitor being very high up off the desk, but a good monitor arm will handle it without a problem.
If you're a programmer and you use a fullscreen terminal, with the line you type on the bottom, your monitor needs to be higher.
What is this suggestion based on?
https://www.optometrytimes.com/view/deconstructing-20-20-20-...
You don't sit farther back if you install a second monitor; why would you do that if you obtain more size in a single unit?
If you can, reduce screen time. No more than 3-4 hours a day. If you can't, take a computer free day every 2-3 days.
This has helped me more than any setting, or app.
I think this is unfeasible for a gigantic portion of this site readership.
I make it a point to get up and walk around. Take my eyes off the screen.
Since the pandemic forced me to work from home, I take this hourly opportunity to get in 30-50 pushups every hour. Also helps with water intake. And takes my mind off the urge to take a tea or coffee break. But now that I think of it, I could've done the same in office.
Having flux installed also helps.
You need to reduce the time you are looking at the screen continuously. Realising that has helped me lot.
Also washing your eyes with water, 3-4 times a day helps. Makes eyes relax.
Hope this helps, cheers.
Before that I tried EVERYTHING!
* Dark Mode
* Night mode (Flux etc.)
* Changing Brightness
* Changing ambient light
* a few different eyedrops
* Looking away more often
* Sitting farther away from my monitor
* Different monitor positions
* Different monitors
* Sitting less in front of a monitor
* Bigger Text
Nothing helped me. I asked my doctor and he couldn't help me at all. Sprinkling some water onto my eyes? It just works.
(I guess my eyes are just overheating or something? But honestly I have no idea.)
I got an Oculus Rift2 to play Beat Saber for mini-fitness breaks and end up with a sweaty face so frequently wash/rinse during my workday. Eyes do seem less tired these days though I didn't think about it just until now.
I use Logic Audio on my Mac desktop a lot, but it thankfully is in "dark mode" by default. I assume they made that choice knowing that people would be staring at the screen for hours on end.
I also set my screen brightness to a comfortable level that isn't nearly full blast, and enabled the feature that lowers blue light when the sun goes down.
Another thing I do: My laptop runs Windows, so I also have Linux running in a terminal on screen pretty much at all times. I let the terminal take over half the screen, which is pretty much where Windows wants to place it.
However, with my browser (chrome), I stretched it to fill 3/4 or 2/3 (or so) of the screen so that it partly overlaps the terminal, and then set the defaults for a slightly larger font. This allows me to see web-based resources when I'm tooling around on the Linux cli. You have to be careful not to accidentally move the browser window too much that it goes full-screen, but you develop super-human placement accuracy after you've done that a few times.
Likewise, when I am watching anything that is full-screen, like YouTube for example, I set my laptop on the foot stool so that my eyes can have a different focal length for a while.
That's about it. I hope other people post some ideas, because I spend way too much time on the screen and so I'm always looking for improvements as well.
Whether to use dark mode or light mode in text editors/websites depends on the lighting condition around you. I mostly used dark mode now (except GitHub), but I make sure the contrast of the theme is not too big, not too small. But in my prev job we had white room with white everything and lots of light, and I was much more comfy with light themed terminal (although not white; soft bgcolor like HN has).
On top of that I will add that for some reason for me, mobile usage contributes way more to eyestrain/headache/fatigue than computer use (order of magnitude diff). I can work all day long on a laptop without much issue. But checking mobile, especially as first thing in the morning or in late evening (even in blue light reduction mode), makes me much more tired nearly immediately for some reason.
I also use the QuickShade app which makes the screen darker without reducing backligt brightness.
My first reaction was thinking it was kind of ugly so initially I didn't leave it on but after a month or so I noticed my eyes were getting strained so I tried it.
It is ugly, but it makes a big difference. Now, when I turn off the Low Blue Light mode I can instantly feel the strain on my eyes. The picture is gorgeous but it's too bright and intense for work. Since I use several monitors I manually adjusted the others to reduce the blue.
The biggest downside is selecting colors for design work. The Low Blue Light screws that big time, but after comparing how different colors look on different monitors I decided not to worry about that too much because I have no control over that at all.
[1] https://www.aao.org/eye-health/tips-prevention/blue-light-di...
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/blue-light-ha...
So, the feature also dims the brightness, and I did this with my other monitors too so they matched the BENQ monitor I said has this feature.
But it's more fun to be dismissive, right?
These two things are true: 1. screens cause eye strain, 2. screens make it harder to sleep because of blue light. People then mistakenly interpret this as "screens cause eye strain because of blue light".
It's a bit frustrating how many blue light filters advertise themselves as reducing eye strain, exploiting this misconception.
If you're reading a web page or coding, use the CTRL+mouse wheel shortcut to quickly zoom in and out to suit your viewing preference at any given time. I also frequently adjust the font size of the many notepad.exe instances I usually have floating about. The important thing is making the computer work for your needs, rather than trying adapt to the computer.
Alternatively, I've had good results by reducing the screen resolution, as counter-intuitive as that may seem. I always used to deride my Father for doing this, but now, in my mid-30's, I see his point.
Apart from that, try moving the screen away from your eyes a bit more, and try having your f.lux equivalent enabled throughout the day.
On MacOS there is an app called "Time Out" that dims the screen every 20 minutes for 20 seconds. It forces you to just relax for 20 seconds (you can set it up as you like). In the meanwhile you can either look at something that is far away (several meters or a good reason to learn metric), or just close your eyes and lean back.
There might be other Apps for other OSes but if you're into Arduino you can just smack a LED on the board and let it light up every 20 Minutes for ~20 seconds to have a reminder.
Additionally, I take a break every 4 hrs for at lest 20 minutes and go for a walk in the park, cook something, cuddle the cat or whatever.
What that means is that I use a light theme for my editor during daylight and when my room gets dark and I realize that my screen "becomes bright" I switch to a dark theme.
Also I can recommend night mode. Gnome and others have this out of the box. What it does is fade your screen to more reddish colors when it gets dark.
Also don't use too small fonts.. this sometimes seems to be like a contest for coders: "Look i have font size 7. I need to scroll less".
And also don't use too low contrast color schemes.
-Get a decent monitor (not necessary, but I prefer the wide curved ones like this[0]) and increase the font size. I never went back to my 12" laptop screen after I discovered larger monitors with big font.
Specific to day time use:
-Try and avoid glare. You can place your screen in front of a large source of light and turn up the screens brightness.
Specific to night time use:
-Use applications like Redshift or f.lux to reduce blue light as much as you can.
-Reduce the brightness of your screen.
-Try and get ambiant light, such as a difuse lamp or something, behind your screen to illuminate the area surrounding your work space.
These usually work for me. Best of luck!
I do use prescription glasses ground for that working distance and strongly recommend that (prescription lenses).
I recently (four weeks ago) had to replace the monitor/TV and spent more than a short while choosing comfortable typeface, font size, and RGB/BGR pixel ordering.
As some others have mentioned, if one's eyes are strained, corrections are warranted. I do not deliberately practice frequent distance gazing, but I suspect I do so unconsciously.
Dry eye typically comes from not blinking enough. It can also be worsened by blepharaitis (inflammation of the eyelids).
If you feel like you’re straining to focus (and you haven’t already), you should see an optometrist and get computer glasses.
I have a pair that I wear occasionally, and I find them especially helpful with low-res (e.g. medium to large 1080p) displays. On that note consider getting a 4K or better display, especially if it’s larger than 20” or so.
Finally there’s the so-called 20-20-20 rule, which is to focus on something at least 20 feet (6m) away for at least 20 seconds at least once every 20 minutes.
They seem plausible -- certainly that populations that don't look far away seem to need to correct their vision more, which implies behaving differently could lessen or reverse the effect. But I don't know of them being tested. I'm curious to get n higher than 1 before devoting resources to it.
Read up on PWM flicker in displays and their effects.
It’s one of the biggest factors yet ignored by most folks.
This is different from the refresh rate of your monitor.
This and the other tips mentioned in this thread.
I hardly ever get eyestrain. But when very focused on a task for long hours, I find I may inadvertently exert my eyes more. Never happens with casual reading.
Having your eye focus at a certain distance for a long time has an effect on your ocular muscles.
I think this is true, because for me when I'm having a bad eye day I can play games for hours but struggle to read through a paragraph.
I had laser eye surgery and almost regret it, my eyes get dry easily now (I seem to get recurring blepharitis which I lessen with a heat pack) and one eye in particular almost always feels like it has grit in it. But I can play games or watch videos and it's engaging enough that I forget all that, while reading is a completely different story.
Dark mode and larger fonts definitely help, as does a downward eye angle. My work laptop screen does not help, I don't know what it is but I just feel worse at the end of a day that I use it. I think the text is probably too small but I don't realise because in proportion to the smaller screen size it looks large.
My laptop is 1366x768 and it feels "wrong" to be zooming-in when screen real estate is already so limited. But once you get over the initial weirdness, you'll just keep doing it. Right now, on my desktop, I have HN at 250% zoom. I can make out 100%, 150% is perfectly readable, but 250% just feels great. Also many sites, including HN, have unlimited or very long paragraph widths so zooming fixes that too.
Yeah I think my work issued 14" is too. It certainly doesn't help that something like MS Teams wastes so much space even with 'full screen' active, and the same for various ribbon UIs. But I think you're right I should just give up and zoom.
This type of eyeglasses are not for helping with poor eyesight. They're specifically for reducing strain on the eyes when focusing at short distances for longer periods of time, which is the core of the problem.
Before I got a prescription for such - which has completely solved the problems I suffered for a long time - I had to resort to tricks like taking frequent breaks just to focus my eyes on things at longer distances, which is only a band-aid rather than an actual solution to the problem.
Cripes. It'd have to be a 55" screen for me to use it at that distance.
For example spiking your blood sugar causes inflammations around your body, and when that happens in your eyes it hurts and they get blurry so it feels like you are strained. To avoid that eat better and exercise regularly. If you already do those things and are in good shape you can start searching for other fixes.
My eyesight is 20/20, but I did start suffering from some eye fatigue and dryness recently. What worked for me was a pair of cheap computer glasses off amazon that "block blue light". They're clear and don't affect color vision, so I don't know what (if anything) they in fact block, but the improvement is noticeable.
I'm not going to name specific brands, but
The app Stretchly (free, open source) can display periodic reminders to take breaks from the screen. [0] I can't recommend it enough. It worked well for my RSI too. Alternative apps are Workrave or Workpace.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004269899...
This is incredibly annoying.
I have noticed another thing though. Sometimes the text/images are sharp but doubled-imaged a small fraction of a character apart. Part of this is likely due to extra muscle effort to maintain focus. Another part is that the degree of this effect is variable. I have drastically cut down my caffeine intake as it was getting out of hand during WFH. Since reduction in consumption and sometimes choosing tea or decaf, I've noticed much less of the double-imaging and don't reach for the low-magnification (1.0) reading glasses as often.
Btw, does anyone use very weak reading glasses? I was thinking about getting something lower than 1.0 (say 0.75). Drugstores only seem to stock 1.25+ and I can find 1.0 at dollar stores, online I could probably order 0.75 to try.
Edit: a completely different theory is that taking Beat Saber fitness breaks made my weak eye less lazy since depth perception is a good part of the game.
1) My regular prescription glasses now have a blue blocking coating. It gives them a slight yellow tint that I don’t notice, and it noticeably reduces eye strain (but does not eliminate).
2) Bias lighting behind my monitor that lights up the wall behind it. Staring at a bright screen in front of a black wall is no bueno, bias lighting at least alleviates the contrast between the two.
I also use f.lux on one of the highest settings. it is jarring at first, but you get used to it and save your eyes
It import not to have the sun shine in this window at the times you do this. That causes eyestrain too.
You can thank me latter.
To reset: redshift -x
JK. Often a nap helps.
0: gmg-performance.com