[HN Gopher] Create a shortcut for even lower phone brightness
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Create a shortcut for even lower phone brightness
Author : DitheringIdiot
Score : 152 points
Date : 2023-11-06 15:47 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (practicalbetterments.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (practicalbetterments.com)
| rimunroe wrote:
| I've been using a similar shortcut like this for a while on iOS
| for bedtime reading. I hadn't seen the "reduce whitepoint" option
| before, but by setting the shortcut to "zoom" you can get a
| similar (possibly slightly dimmer?) effect. The trick is to make
| it so the zoom shortcut dims the unzoomed area, and then set the
| unzoomed area to the entire screen. I just checked, and the
| effects of those two settings stack to make things quite dark.
| DitheringIdiot wrote:
| That's interesting, I'll look into it. Using the method
| outlined in the article I can get it to the point of being
| almost not being able to see the screen. Though at night once
| your eyes adjust, I think going even dimmer could be useful.
| rimunroe wrote:
| One downside of either the zoom trick or the reduce
| whitepoint option is that you won't see the screen dim before
| the screen locks from inactivity. This occasionally trips me
| up if I'm having trouble reading a page quickly. I usually
| work around this by just touching the screen occasionally or
| increasing the inactivity limit temporarily.
| kylebenzle wrote:
| The nonsense Apple users go to for the simplest of features is
| always mind blowing to me. If they were paying 1/2 the price
| I'd get it but Apple products just make no sense to me.
| FredPret wrote:
| Apple device defaults cover 999/1000 use cases absolutely
| perfectly - for me and apparently most people.
|
| It's no problem creating a weird workaround for the other
| 1/1000 items.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Right. Because Android has it's ultra low brightness setting
| where? Oh look! It, too, is in Accessibility settings.
|
| Just stop
| domino24 wrote:
| We actually have a slider bar in the quick menu drop down.
| Also Night Light which removes blue light (also in the drop
| down). These can also be programmed to go on/off at set
| times (bedtime mode). Meanwhile, my husband as never been
| able to locate any of these in an iPhone without the help
| of this thread.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > We actually have a slider bar in the quick menu drop
| down.
|
| You mean like iPhone's Control Center, which is a pull
| up? There's a large, very clear screen brightness
| widget...
|
| > Meanwhile, my husband as never been able to locate any
| of these in an iPhone without the help of this thread.
|
| Aside from the fact that I believe night shift is _on by
| default_ :
|
| You long press the screen brightness slider (long presses
| are a common UI function...) and boom, there's two
| buttons for dark mode and night shift, and below night
| shift it says "off until (time here")
|
| Or you can type in "night" into the system-wide search
| and "night shift" pops up as an option?
|
| Or you can google "night mode iphone"?
|
| Your husband being completely helpless isn't the fault of
| iOS.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| You don't need to go to "nonsense." Night mode is built-in to
| iOS, no software required - and it's Android that is
| imitating iOS with the accessibility menu, not the other way
| around. iOS is famous for its accessibility features. Since
| the early days of MacOS, Apple has always included
| accessibility features in its software.
|
| For _years_ I 've had "make the screen red" as a shortcut to
| three home button rapid presses.
|
| > Apple products just make no sense to me.
|
| I'm using an iPhone that cost me $300 used when I bought it
| several years ago, is now six years old, was until a month or
| so fully supported OS-wise and will continue to get security
| updates for another year or two, and is plenty fast enough
| for everything I do. Airdrop is incredibly handy, almost
| daily, and has no equivalent on the Android side. It backs up
| automatically to my mac any time it's on wifi and has power,
| also no equivalent on Android. I have a ton of the data
| collection turned off in the privacy tab. Half my apps don't
| know my real email address because I use Apple's email proxy
| service. iOS integrates nicely with my open-source self-
| hosted file sync and my open-source password database. The
| apps on my device collect a lot less data about me, and my
| device is not incessantly reporting everything it can to
| Google.
|
| The battery is original and has 75% of its capacity, and
| battery life is generally excellent. Not a single component
| in the phone has needed replacement / worn out. The screen is
| great. The speakers are great. Reception is great. Facetime
| audio calls are really pleasant with a couple of friends
| compared to regular phone calls. It never crashes. The
| Lightning jack still works perfectly, for example - and I
| don't bother with wireless charging most of the time.
|
| I get that it's nice to prop up one's ego thinking that
| you're *so much smarter than millions of people who are
| willing to pay a premium for something, or you can accept
| that there's a reason people make a choice other than what
| you do, that they might be different reasons, different
| priorities, etc.
| jihadjihad wrote:
| Been doing this for several years now and it works great
| (triple click the Home button to dim the screen), but I can't
| help but wonder if a standalone setting in iOS wouldn't be a
| better option.
| Ajay-p wrote:
| This is excellent information! I use my phone in bed, maybe too
| much, and wished for long time it could go lower. The Kindle app
| on my iPad will go lower so I knew it was possible. Thank you!
| kylebenzle wrote:
| By "information" you mean the idea that a screen brightness can
| be adjusted? I am honestly confused if you thought before
| reading this that pixels were somehow limited by how dim they
| could get?
| AeroNotix wrote:
| It might come as a shock but sometimes software is imperfect.
| jqr- wrote:
| The post gives instructions on how to lower the brightness
| below what the slider normally allows. It was useful news to
| me too.
| peddling-brink wrote:
| This was unnecessarily rude.
|
| Did you read the article? It's about a specific accessibility
| setting that many won't have thought to use for this purpose.
|
| Pixels that are driven by real hardware and software will be
| limited in how dim they get.
| bscphil wrote:
| This is not just the backlight setting: below a certain level
| the feature will darken the level of the pixels so that white
| (255, 255, 255) is reduced to something darker. On an OLED
| screen, of course, this just has the effect of allowing lower
| brightnesses than the phone's minimum, but on backlit screens
| it still has a surprisingly large effect.
| eternauta3k wrote:
| With FBReader you can slide your finger along the left edge of
| the screen to adjust brightness, and it goes down to pretty darn
| dark.
| pmontra wrote:
| I have no extra dim settings on my Android phone but I've been
| using Screen Filter since 2011. It's a sub half MB app last
| updated in 2013 that paints a dark overlay on the screen and
| makes it darker than the minimum darkness reachable from the
| brightness slider. Its darkness is configurable and it's pretty
| much everything it does.
| globular-toast wrote:
| The best quality of life improvement I've made in the past few
| years is to break the phone in bed habit and start a reading
| habit.
| justin_oaks wrote:
| I also found that reading books at night helps me get to sleep
| better, though I still use my phone for reading them.
|
| I suspect that the light of a phone screen matters less than
| the content you view on the phone.
| globular-toast wrote:
| I think it also matters how you interact with said content.
| Scrolling is really bad as it needs near constant interaction
| but page turning via taps anywhere on the screen seems to
| work really well.
|
| The screen on my eReader is a way better shape than any phone
| when it comes to reading books. Add to that the fact they
| cost a fraction what a phone costs and can't possibly send a
| notification to keep you awake makes them the superior
| falling asleep device for me. I also don't need any weird
| hacks like this to make the screen really dim.
| smegsicle wrote:
| now do one for volume
| davio wrote:
| On Mac, Shift Option Volume down lets you do quarter
| increments. This opens up 3 lower volume options between 1 and
| off.
| einherjae wrote:
| You can go even further if you open the MIDI settings thing
| (I don't remember the exact name, it's in Utilities).
|
| There you can set the per channel volume with 2 digits,
| giving you 10 steps extra between 0 and 1, as well as
| balance.
| x-yl wrote:
| SoundAssistant on Samsung devices lets you do this as well. It
| gives you per-app sliders which stack with the main slider
| allowing you to go below 1% -- or whatever number rounds to
| "off" on your headphones.
| encypruon wrote:
| I did. I have an "Asus Zenfone Max Pro M1" (what a mouthful)
| and the volume is always too high and the audio ridiculously
| bad at "low" volumes. Changing some values with ALSA makes it
| almost bearable. The easiest way I found to do that was to root
| the phone, compile tinyalsa in termux and use this script to
| call tinyalsa with root:
|
| https://pastebin.com/5f1jwpkb
|
| If anyone has ideas how to do this without root, get around the
| issue of calls being lower volume or remove the dependency on
| tinyalsa and termux, I'm all ears.
| kaldev wrote:
| I did this a few weeks ago and it is a gamechanger. The only bad
| thing is that it enables me to stay on my phone late at night
| when I should be sleeping.
| orev wrote:
| The zoom trick is how you used to have to do it, but then they
| added reduce white point. When you enable reduce white point, a
| slider is shown that lets you adjust it, all the way down to
| almost completely off. I can't imagine needing to layer zoom on
| top of it once you reach that level.
| rimunroe wrote:
| Oh that's good to know! I'll switch to using that instead
| charcircuit wrote:
| >so it's odd that manufacturers choose the default minimum
| brightness to be brighter than the sun.
|
| The default brightness of a phone is several hundred nits where
| the sun is 1.6 billion nits.
| einherjae wrote:
| To quote Einstein: "everything is relative"
| calt wrote:
| Yeah I was really perplexed by that line. I had to stop and
| scratch my head.
|
| Maybe they mean, "brighter than daylight ambient light levels
| indoors"?
| chromakode wrote:
| On Pixel phones you can assign the extra dim toggle to pressing
| both volume keys at once. It's also accessible on many Android
| phones via a quick settings tile.
| carb wrote:
| You can also (at least on Samsung phones) adjust the "Extra dim
| shortcut"!
|
| I have it set it to "Tap Accessibility button", which is a
| small person-shaped icon that sits at the very bottom right of
| my screen, to the right of the Back button.
| bscphil wrote:
| LineageOS lets you activate it on a schedule, e.g. 10 p.m. to 7
| a.m. I think maybe stock Android does too?
|
| This is one of the many areas that Samsung phones suck. For
| many versions, and for older phones that are mostly stuck on
| those versions, they hide this Android feature entirely. I
| managed to get it sort-of working by figuring out the intent
| name and making a shortcut for it in my launcher. (If you have
| a brand new Samsung, I don't think this is an issue.)
| captn3m0 wrote:
| I have this, along with "Smart Invert" as my triple-click. It is
| quite helpful for night time.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| I would love an Android app that lets me reliably set the
| brightness to 1 or 2%. Not 3%, not 0%. The default slider makes
| this nearly impossible. I've tried a few programs to do this and
| none worked well.
| sphars wrote:
| Pretty sure Macrodroid or Tasker can do this. In Macrodroid, I
| can set brightness to an integer 0-100 for brightness
| percentage.
|
| Plus, on Pixels at least, there is a setting for Extra Dim (in
| accessibility settings) which can also probably be set via
| Macrodroid/Tasker. May need the ADB hack to allow system
| setting changes though.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| hmm I'll try that. I realize now I may need 0-255, which I
| think is the native measurement in the API. I really do want
| a very small number over 0; on this Samsung tablet that's
| what looks right.
| greentea23 wrote:
| Not for everyone, but this does that perfectly well:
| https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Termux-brightness
| pynappo wrote:
| I've used the Automate app for doing exactly this, adjusting
| brightness to slightly above minimum if I set it too low
|
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.llamalab.a...
| OGWhales wrote:
| On a similar note, you can use the shortcuts app on iphone to
| make a flashlight toggle that can be set much lower than what can
| be set through control panel.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/kNTTlsu.png
| alin23 wrote:
| Woaaah, always wanted this for searching stuff after bedtime
| without waking up my wife and dog. Thanks!!!
| artimaeis wrote:
| Hey, someone had the same idea! This was the first shortcut I
| actually found useful. I also have it increase the text size
| since at my preferred white point the text at default can be
| pretty difficult to read.
|
| Then a 2nd shortcut to reverse everything back to how I like it
| in the daytime.
| moneywoes wrote:
| Is there a similar trick for mac / windows laptops?
|
| Would really help working late at night
| bajsejohannes wrote:
| https://lunar.fyi/ can do that (as well as control brigthness
| on external monitors)
| citruscomputing wrote:
| For Mac, Lunar (brew install --cask lunar) gives "sub-zero
| dimming" that works perfectly -- it hooks into the brightness
| keys and gives a whole second, lower menu. The lowest setting
| is _actually too dim_ (as any lowest non-zero brightness
| setting should be...) Works for external monitors, too!
| timenova wrote:
| There's no Reduce White Point on Mac as far as I am aware.
| However, you can use the fantastic Lunar [0] app to achieve
| this, as it supports "Sub-Zero Dimming".
|
| To use it, I think you just need to start Lunar, and then press
| the Reduce Brightness button on your keyboard until it goes
| below the minimum Mac allows.
|
| [0] https://lunar.fyi
| Given_47 wrote:
| Love lunar. Dev is super responsive and it has a pretty
| feature-full cli tool as well which makes it easy to script
| w-ll wrote:
| https://www.pangobright.com/ on windows is great, albeit a
| little weird. I think it makes a transparent always on top
| window that doesnt take events. System right click menus and
| stuff seem to no be under it.
|
| But I still like this over flux and the likes
| roughly wrote:
| The other useful vision accessibility setting is "Color Filters"
| - I've used this one two different ways.
|
| Currently, I've got it set to put a reddish-orange cast on the
| screen - like a "turbo night shift" more similar to the depth
| F.lux will let you take your mac. You can use the Shortcuts app
| to create a shortcut to enable the filter, and then set that to
| turn on at certain points, so around 10 at night my phone goes
| from normal night shift to a much more aggressive red/orange-
| shifted profile. The effect at night is dramatic - the phone
| becomes much less jarring to look at. The OLED screens are great
| for this, too - a reduction in blue color is a reduction in blue
| light. The shortcut turns itself back off at 6am.
|
| The other filter you can apply is a black & white filter, which
| removes all color from the screen. Give this a try for an hour
| and then turn it off - you'll be amazed at the riot of attention-
| grabbing color app makers are throwing at you. I've found it's a
| lot easier not to get sucked into the phone hole when the UI is
| set to black & white - the whole device feels calmer and less
| urgent.
|
| If you haven't spent time in the accessibility settings, though,
| go exploring. It's where Apple puts all the good stuff.
| otteromkram wrote:
| Android (at least version 12) has a bedtime mode that converts
| the display to B&W. There's also an eye comfort shield feature.
|
| However, I stick to using the Blue Light Filter Android app,
| which is amazing. Not sure if it's available for iOS.
| HPsquared wrote:
| On Samsung at least, you can set a key shortcut to enable B&W
| mode.
|
| I try and use it most of the time, and the shortcut makes it
| easy to see things in colour if needed.
| capitainenemo wrote:
| You might not have noticed, but check for the button called
| "Extra Dim" in your Samsung top area quick controls. It's
| not enabled by default but allows toggling additional
| dimming. You can customise it in settings to control the
| level of dimming, adding a a screen or key shortcut, and
| control whether it activates on phone reboot or not. Key
| shortcut (or deactivate on reboot) can be helpful if you
| set it way up, and have adaptive brightness off, and it is
| a sunny day.
|
| (oh, and yeah, it does work nicely with B&W mode and blue
| light filter modes - all 3 are quite helpful for reading in
| bed without staying up too late)
| guidedlight wrote:
| iOS has a similar feature called Night Shift (Settings >
| Display & Brightness > Night Shift)
| eggplantemoji69 wrote:
| I do the exercise of imagining the colors one would be exposed
| to as a hunter gatherer (context in which humans developed, 90%
| of human history), and there would seldom be anything vibrant
| (sunsets, sky, plants/flowers) when compared to today. I would
| imagine black + white on the phone would assist in more
| optimally calibrating one's dopaminergic pathways / receptors.
| MadnessASAP wrote:
| Just turned on the grayscale, take it for a spin.
|
| I'm not surprised the good features are hidden behind
| Accessibility. I'd argue most other features on a phone are
| designed for someone else's benefit. Albeit cleverly disguised
| as benefits for the user.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| This is known as the curb cut effect: https://en.m.wikipedia.
| org/wiki/Curb_cut_effect#:~:text=The%....
|
| While sloped, level curb cuts at intersections have been
| implemented primarily for accessibility legislation
| compliance, it turns out they are useful not only for the
| disabled but for people with strollers, heavy bags, etc. A
| similar effect can also be seen with the modern ubiquity of
| closed captioning.
| roughly wrote:
| Yeah, this is a standard mantra in Accessibility work -
| ability is a spectrum, and people move up and down this
| spectrum both across their lives and even within their
| days.
| r00fus wrote:
| I like the saying "most people are temporarily able-
| bodied". You will likely need accessibility at some point
| in your life - and almost surely nearing the end of it.
|
| So clearly affordances to assist the disabled are going
| to benefit everyone ... eventually.
| graypegg wrote:
| I have a family member who's made her career on compliance
| consulting for the built environment standard for Ontario.
| She always mentions how much accessibility accommodations
| are actually improvements to spaces, not just separate
| "just in case a blind person comes here" utilities.
|
| You're designing for the interface/usage pattern, not so
| much a specific disability. A curb cut is a usage pattern
| for anything with wheels. A greyscale mode is a usage
| pattern for anyone that wants/needs information conveyed
| without relying on colour distinctions.
|
| Tons of those adaptions are just plain useful in cases
| outside disability.
| touisteur wrote:
| There's also a host of UI automation lying behind
| accessibility features. Shame it's the first thing that
| breaks at every cycle of rewrite.
| andrepd wrote:
| The alternative to black and white stuff is simply: curate what
| you have in your phone. Uninstall _all_ social media (yes all).
| Keep only constructive content on your device. No useless apps
| sending notifications, no feed of brain-rotting content at one
| tap on you homescreen.
|
| I keep:
|
| - a carefully curated list of high-quality channels on youtube
| (on newpipe, so no tracking and no echo chamber personalised
| recommendations)
|
| - a carefully curated list of high-quality subreddits
|
| - hackernews
|
| And that's it. Just cut off the junk, grayscale wont save you
| bee_rider wrote:
| Hackernews is very much social media like the rest.
|
| My solution was to keep social media on my phone, and just
| admit to myself that it is an evil distraction device. No
| social media allowed on the computer, it is for working.
|
| It worked pretty well for a while, but now I find I'm
| reaching for the phone more than I ought to.
|
| Probably time to check for another habit breaking
| technique...
| jt2190 wrote:
| I've done exactly this for years now. I'm not sure if it actually
| reduces "blue light" enough to prevent me from triggering my
| brain's "it's daytime" mode, but I figure it's at least allowing
| my pupils to stay more dilated (better night vision)
|
| Edit: I don't make a habit of looking at my phone in bed. In
| addition to the "blue light" there are other things that
| contribute to wakefulness, such as any voluntary muscle movement
| (scrolling and tapping) and even just keeping your conscious
| brain active, which I find I do when I'm interacting with my
| phone.
| crystaln wrote:
| Even better for bed time (and even stargazing) is the add a red
| mode. I have had my power button triple click toggle this for
| many years.
|
| It can be hard to operate if you turn the blue leds off entirely
| but you don't need much.
|
| https://www.blockbluelight.com/blogs/news/how-to-turn-your-i....
| rpastuszak wrote:
| heh, just made a comment about a similar approach:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38165214
| dylan604 wrote:
| I use some of the astro apps like Star Walk and the like, and
| there's a glaring issue with their internal red modes. When you
| need to input text, it uses the OS keyboard which is no longer
| red filtered. It is very jarring when out in the dark.
|
| Do the filters you're suggesting also tint the keyboard?
| jahar wrote:
| Yes, using the in built colour filter makes everything tinted
| red, so it should resolve that problem for you!
| dylan604 wrote:
| I will be very happy to try this the next time I use it.
| rpastuszak wrote:
| Ha, I've been working on some similar projects in the past couple
| of weeks! (Although I was aiming for a much, much darker screen.)
|
| Here are my design/dev notes:
|
| https://untested.sonnet.io/Obsidian+for+Vampires
|
| https://untested.sonnet.io/Night+Rider
|
| The idea to work on this was partially inspired by stargazing
| apps, e.g. NightSky.
|
| I'm still not 100% if these experiments are worth pursuing (I
| need to pay rent) but if you'd like to see a tool like this, or
| if you have any use-cases I didn't mention, please let me know.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Using it all the time, also applying a red tint.
| 3seashells wrote:
| Wish the auto adjust brightness would track pupils and detect
| readability that way.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| I miss this from the original iPhone (or somewhere around iPhone
| 4) where the system would let you just turn the backlight all the
| way to off (though it could be hard to turn it back up if you
| turned off auto brightness).
| alanbernstein wrote:
| Moon reader for Android has a built-in feature to set extra-low
| brightness using something like a full-screen gray/alpha overlay.
| That, plus white text on a full-screen black background, makes
| for an extremely dim screen.
|
| It only works for reading ebooks (or whatever you can open in the
| app), which IMO is a huge benefit. I don't want to be scrolling
| nonsense websites in bed, but I do think a smartphone ebook
| reader is the least-bright, most comfortable and most ergonomic
| way to read in bed.
| jmercouris wrote:
| While this is great, it reduces the contrast noticeably, and can
| make lots of text difficult to read.
| oblio wrote:
| Any trick for Android to set a temporary mute? 1-2 hours.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Somewhere in Settings, Android lets you set a default timeout
| for how long DND mode stays enabled.
|
| If you want to mess with just ringtone volume, should be doable
| via Tasker or maybe even the built in Routines
| rtcoms wrote:
| > Any trick for Android to set a temporary mute? 1-2 hours.
|
| Moto phone have actions in built where if one puts phone upside
| down and phone goes on silent
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| This is good advice, but I prefer something that automatically
| dims and reduces blue light for me. That way I don't have to
| remember to do it.
|
| f.lux on Windows and Mac, and Twilight on Android, are what work
| for me.
|
| https://justgetflux.com/
|
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.urbandroid...
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