What’s more, we don’t really know what wavelengths of light are being emitted by our devices. Still, there’s a lot about blue light that isn’t known, says Geoffrey Goodfellow, an associate professor at the Illinois College of Optometry. That’s why your eyes may feel more relaxed and less strained when you’re looking at a device with Night Shift on after the sun has gone down. Though Night Shift’s main focus - judging by the name - is to offset the iPhone’s effects on the circadian rhythm, limiting blue light on devices may lead to fewer headaches, blurry vision and dry eyes, Morgenstern says. It doesn’t necessarily harm the eyes like UV light - which can cause cataracts - but it’s not a high-quality light to see by, he says. It’s also a source of eye strain, says Andy Morgenstern, the chair of the American Optometric Association’s new technology committee. Sleep isn’t the only thing blue light affects, either. Which means that if you’ve turned on Night Shift but are receiving alerts from your boss, or are watching something disturbing, you’ll probably still have trouble getting to sleep. That includes relatively low-tech interactions like arguing with a loved one over dinner. If someone is having a hard time getting to sleep at night, being exposed to blue light during the day and darkness at night can help.īlue light isn't the whole storyBlue light isn’t the whole story for sleep disorders, though - since anything that’s too stimulating can also keep you awake, Dasgupta says. "But the most potent one is blue light." People with certain sleep disorders use light therapy to help reset people’s internal clocks, he says. "Any light source is going to have the effect of suppressing melatonin," Dasgupta says. Our bodies have a particularly strong response to blue light, which suppresses a hormone called melatonin that prepares our bodies for sleep, Dasgupta says. But we respond very strongly to sunlight, which in the days before electricity was the main cue for sleeping and waking. The natural human body clock is actually 24.2 hours, rather than 24 hours - which is why it’s easy to stay up too late, says Raj Dasgupta, a sleep medicine specialist at the University of Southern California. Blue light helps set our body clocks - circadian rhythms, if you’re feeling fancy. There is some science behind light affecting our natural rest patterns.
That’s why white objects still look white even when the light changes.) (It’s also helpful to remember the light’s color based on the spectrum isn’t the same as the light’s perceived color - the latter is what our brains do to interpret our surroundings, and we’re very good at adjusting for transitions in light during the day. LED lights emit more blue than incandescent lights do. Artificial light, however, emits slightly different wavelengths - fluorescent lights vary in color based on the blend of component parts.
Blue light settings for mac full#
Sunlight appears white, until it’s passed through a prism and the full spectrum forms. What’s visible to us is a very narrow band, and blue light is near the UV end. At one end, there’s UV light, gamma rays and X-rays at the other are infrared rays and radar. First of all, there are lots of kinds of light - not all of them are visible. It’s similar in practice to f.lux and other apps available for desktop computers that have been out for years, though being baked into iOS opens up this kind of feature to a much larger audience.īlue light sets our body clocks Before we get into Night Shift, it may be helpful to understand how light works. In its description of Night Shift, Apple insinuates that it is designed to help you fall asleep easier, if you happen to be up late using your smartphone or tablet. The feature, if enabled, will automatically take effect when the sun goes down, making the phone look "warmer" as the screen displays more of the yellow-orange end of the spectrum. Last week, Apple released iOS 9.3 and introduced "Night Shift" - a way of modifying the computer’s display so that less blue light is present - to millions of iPhones and iPads.
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