Is your iPad keeping you up at night? | Hacker News Reader

Is your iPad keeping you up at night?

networkworld.com

38 pointsstevewillows47 comments

I really wish there was something like f.lux (http://stereopsis.com/flux/) for iOS, or at least without having to jailbreak and do whatever else, because then I might be able to use my iPad in bed to read a bit before sleeping.

Having it on my laptop had made a big difference -- I "felt tired" when the display temperature was adjusted at nighttime. Before that, I could happily stare at that blue light and stay awake as long as I wanted, at the expense of my productivity the next day.

Is there something like that for jailbroken iOS devices?

Indeed, f.lux is available for jailbroken iOS devices (and free). http://stereopsis.com/flux/ios.html.

I gotta say I reckon f.lux is the only thing on Cydia worth jailbreaking for.

There's a lot of other tweaks which make iOS a much nicer place. More recently, Nitrous is a pretty amazing tweak which enables the Nitro JS engine for non-Safari apps. Speeds things up big time.

Aside from that you can have a way of having a particular browser open besides Safari, scrobble your iTunes tracks automatically, password protect apps, have a much better lockscreen experience, much better folder experience, theming, retina-fy low res apps, have a download manager, etc.

For me personally, there's plenty of reasons to jailbreak.

The current version of iOS is easily jailbroken and f.lux is a free package, available right from cydia without any detours. It's not as smooth as a built-in solution would've been, but much better than I ever expected.

What I do is invert the colors on the iPad at night and turn the brightness all the way down. The screen on/screen off button can be programmed to be the trigger. When I press it 3 times quickly it inverts the colors. No need to jailbreak for this hack.

Nice tip, I'll give it a shot. It's in General -> accessibility -> triple click home in case anyone's wondering

The article just says "electronics with backlit displays". I'm surprised it singles out tablets, because unless I'm reading it wrong, that includes laptops, or even television sets. Strikes me as untrue, since almost everybody has these and stares at them all day and not everybody has sleeping problems.

I think a lot more people use tablets in bed than use(d) laptops in bed. I for one read a _lot_ more from a backlit display since the iPad.

Sleeping problems is a pretty extreme case. If the tablet or laptop pushes your sleep time back to midnight from 10 PM, that could be a large and significant effect even if one doesn't consider it 'a problem'.

(In some groups, this might be a problem, and the paper specifically mentions them: adolescents already have a sleep schedule that has been pushed back by puberty, love their gadgets, and have hard and early wake-up times. The result: highschoolers spend the first few classes half-asleep.)

The paper: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/85192141/2012-wood.pdf

For those that aren't aware, there's tools to help with this.

    f.lux    | Windows, OS X, iOS (jailbreak needed) | http://stereopsis.com/flux/
    Redshift | Linux, Windows (experimental)         | http://jonls.dk/redshift/
    Lux      | Android                               | https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vito.lux

Lux isn't as nice as the others because it doesn't change colour temperature, it just puts a red/brown overlay over the screen. AFAIK there's no way to change the screen's colour temperature in Android.

I had no idea about any of these, thanks for sharing!

For Android, I use the Chainfire 3D driver + CF.lumen plugin. You need to have root though.

I was literally looking for flux on linux just before coming to HN to read this, so i can tell you flux is available for linux[1], although there can be issues; which prompted the creation of redshift.

1. see http://stereopsis.com/flux/linux.html

I used xflux when I used linux a while back, it worked very well.

I personally switched back from my nexus 7 to my galaxy nexus for night time reading just for this reason. It's not just the size, the darker blacks of the oled screen also help.

It also helps that the size of the phone is better for novel reading, in my opinion. It's worse for practically everything else, but the ability to fall asleep quicker more than makes up for it.

This is one of the reasons i want OLED screens on everything. I would find it very hard to go back to a non-oled phone, too.

If you need darker-than-minimum setting then check out 'screen filter'.

There's an app to 'fix' this, called Flux, but it's only for jailbrokn iPads. Pity, the Mac app is great.

F.lux is fantastic. I've been using it on all of my systems.

Are you aware of an equivelant for Android?

I use the Chainfire 3D driver + CF.lumen plugin. You need to have root though.

Fyi, you need the CF3D Pro driver.

Pray tell: Why's that a pity?

There are very few downsides to jailbreaking, these days; it's not fair to characterize software that requires a jailbreak negatively for that reason.

It's not a pity for f.lux; it's a pity for iOS.

The Mac app isn't great. It works, but eats ~0.2 CPU on idle. Nocturne is better: it sets the gamma LUT to tint the screen and nothing else, but you have to switch between Day and Night mode manually.

Does anyone know of an extension for firefox (or chrome) that replaces white backgrounds (or even better all light colours) with darker shades?

Flux and co are all well and good, but large areas of white (even when orange-ish) are still a strain, and it seems fairly simple issue to solve (at least in the most simple case; replace #ffffff backgrounds).

Also as a tip for anyone with a windows laptop; you may find, like me, that linux allows your screen to be set much darker than the sparse intervals in windows allow (maybe there is a windows program that allows fine brightness setting?). Macbooks seem to have a very low brigtness setting, although i can't say i've used one in the dark.

userscripts.org/scripts/show/76214

On windows I use a combination of flux and prefbar on Firefox to turn toggle the standard colors on and off, with a custom windows color theme.

On linux I use the "negative" plugin to compiz, with a keystroke (win+n) the whole window goes negative. Great for reading hacker news at night.

Most nights (and when I nap in the afternoon) for the past couple years, I use an iPad to read websites and Instapaper saves for 15-30 minutes in bed before I go to sleep. After that ~15 minutes, I'm out like a light. I've never previously been able to get to sleep as quickly, reliably, and easily.

Sample size of one and all, but I definitely haven't noticed any negative impact on my sleep. If anything, I'm fairly confident that my newly-backlit reading habits have actually helped me get more sleep.

I use the lowest brightness setting for the iPad, doesn't mess up too much with my sleep that way. But I'm still thinking about getting a Kindle for that reason.

f.lux[1] is pretty much THE main reason I jailbroke my iPad.

[1]http://stereopsis.com/flux/ios.html

Likewise. I started using f.lux a few months ago, and now I can use the iPhone at night without getting fully awake.

I'm still getting used to it on the main desktop monitor, though. Installed, uninstalled, now trying again for a 2nd time.

I have found turning my brightness all of the way down (more accessible by double clicking the home button), and turning on white on black text in Settings > Acessibility helps. It inverts the color palatte but produces less light so it's easier to read in the dark.

Anybody experienced sleep problems caused by using internet right before falling asleep and the first thing in the morning?

I've stopped doing that recently, and it does feel liberating, but I still have sleep problems... (Such as waking up every night, sometimes twice.)

That's interesting. Kind of off topic but there is literature to suggest that biphasic sleeping was more normal before: http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/106.2/ah00034...

The sample size for this study is 13 people. I can't take it seriously. In any case, I play Asphalt7 on my iPad in bed before sleeping and haven't noticed too many problems.

> The sample size for this study is 13 people. I can't take it seriously.

Why can't you take it seriously? Whether or not 13 is a sufficient sample size depends on factors that were not given in the article, so I don't see how you can so easily dismiss it out of hand.

I don't get it or is it just me? I never have this problem and I think our society keeps inventing all these gadgets and pills to solve problems that are not really problems.

I find the lowest brightness setting on my Nexus S not dim enough for bedtime reading/browsing, anyone know any good apps?

'screen filter' works great on phones with OLED screens.

This works exceptionally well! I cannot believe how bright the screen actually was after I tried out Screen Filter.

How about a pair of sunglasses? Simple, easy, you probably already own a pair.

You might wanna get Lux : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vito.lux There is a free version with limited functionality if you just want to try it.

Thanks, I'll try that out. :)

That's what my mom has been telling me for the past 3 years, with the most recent reminder over the phone tonight.

Has anyone tried a manual solution such as a red cellophane screen protector?

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