Blue light from your PC’s screen may disrupt your circadian rhythm. Here’s how to use a blue light filter with built-in night modes on your PC or Mac .
Researchers are continually releasing studies on the potential harm of blue light. When you stare at a screen all day and into the evening, it can affect your sleep and disrupt your body’s natural rhythms. For these reasons, blue light filters are incredibly important.
Whether you are spending your day on a Windows PC, Mac, or Chromebook, you should enable their blue light filter to help ease the strain on your eyes. Desktop screens and laptops typically have a built-in filter you can access, and there are downloadable options in case your computer doesn’t have this feature available.
If you’re looking for a blue light filter for your smartphone, however, there are plenty of great apps you can download from the Google Play Store or iOS App Store.What’s the problem with blue light?
The reason blue light hurts is purely biological. Sleep is a part of the circadian rhythm, which is the cycle of biological processes that are determined in part by the levels of light and dark exposed to our bodies.
In the most natural setting, which is one where we’re only exposed to sunlight, our retinas sense when the sun descends and the environment grows darker. That induces our hypothalamus to start the process of producing melatonin and other sleep hormones and reducing our body temperature.
When we use artificial lighting to extend our day, however, our bodies get confused, and the various sleep signals are disrupted. Even worse is the blue light emitted by fluorescent and LED lights — like those on our various device displays — which cause us to be more alert and produce even less melatonin.
That’s why using a blue light filter is so important.Windows 10
Microsoft added a blue light-limiting feature to Windows 10 in the Creators Update released in April 2017. Called Night Light, this feature shifts the Windows 10 and 11 display to show warmer colors that reduce the amount of emitted blue light. Turning the feature on is a simple process.
Step 1: Right-click on the Start button and select Settings on the Power User menu. Alternatively, you can press the Windows + X keys and then click Settings.
Step 2: Choose System in the pop-up window.
Step 3: On Windows 10, the Display category opens by default. In Windows 11, you’ll need to select it from the list of categories on the right. Scroll down on the right and toggle on the Night Light setting.
