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Comment by speedgoose | Hacker News Reader

By the way, it looks like you forgot to disable flux or similar before taking some of the screenshots. They are an bit orange.

To continue on this topic, blue light filters may look pleasing to some but it’s not sure whether they do have an effect:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/opo.12406

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> To continue on this topic, blue light filters may look pleasing to some but it’s not sure whether they do have an effect

I don't know if they have an effect or not, but I much prefer having it on. It feels easier on the eyes. When I turn it off I immediately feel a kind of discomfort.

I don't believe it actually has an effect on my health. But the warmer colors definitely have an effect on my comfort.

I had constant migraines until I started wearing blue light coated (plain glass, no prescription) glasses. Before that I was wearing dark glasses indoors on gloomy days.

Certain lighting (especially fluorescents) and just about any screens always set me off.

Even if they don't have the claimed sleep-related benefits, surely they can't cause any harm (except for slightly orange screenshots!)

True. We can tolerate orange screenshots if it makes some people feel better. Even if it’s a placebo effect.

One study found out that people using such blue light filters tend to have more screen exposure at night. Perhaps they think the filter allow them to watch more the screen, which may not be good.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32197951/

Or do people use blue light filters to try and remedy their preexisting extra screen time?

(I don't have access to the article text and the abstract just seems to point the correlation)

> Lastly, we analyzed the use of blue-light filters, according to an answer to a simple question: whether participants did or did not use a specific filter for filtering blue-light on their screens. Only 10.6% of the sample (N1⁄474) reported using filters, whereas 622 parti- cipants did not. The most prevalent means of filtering blue light were f.lux (Windows) and Twilight (Android) software. No significant dif- ferences were observed for all sleep-related variables mentioned in the previous analyses. A statistical trend was found for the duration of sleep on workdays (489 vs. 461 minutes, t1⁄43.595, p1⁄40.058, Cohen's d1⁄40.23), meaning those that used blue-light filters slept in average approximately 28 minutes longer on a workday than those that did not use any means of filtering blue-light. No other differences were observed. An interesting finding, however, is that the group of people who use filters had more (albeit without statistical signifi- cance) total screen exposure (8.6 vs. 8.3 hrs) on average and more screen exposure on PC (4.3 vs. 3.6 hrs) and mobile devices (3.6 vs 3.4hrs), but less exposure to TV (0.7 vs. 1.2 hrs).

The article is quite positive about blue lights and presents excuses for its findings in the discussion. They ask for a better study with more participants and more samples.

It also cite an interesting paper about patients with insomnia, so not the average hacker, who benefits from blue light filters to sleep better: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07420528.2019.1...

(I have access to these papers from work but there is a very convenient and famous website that we aren’t supposed to name on HN).

People don't use filters just for sleep-related benefits. My optician recommended me to stay away from blue light and sunlight because of my eye conditions.

f.lux don't usually change the color of screenshots if you have a proper grafics card. It changes the color on the output to screen.

they absolutely have an effect, I know firsthand

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