You could just stop staring at your iPhone before you fall asleep?

I don't use my phone in bed. But usually in the hour before bed I'll have to schedule something on the calendar, or set my alarm, etc.

Now, I could do one of the following:

    1. Reorder my life so that I never look at my phone after sundown. 
    2. Jailbreak 

I tried not using my phone for 1 hours before bed, still had insomnia. There's no trivial lifestyle fix that would address the issue f.lux solves.

You could also buy a pair of $8 orange safety goggles and a piece of orange cellophane to cover your phone. The frequencies that disrupt circadian rhythm are 500nm to 450nm or so with the strongest response at 470nm. Response is also dependent on duration and ambient light levels, so if you are in the dark, as much as 0.5 lux of blue light over an hour can halt your pineal gland from producing melatonin.

F.lux also shouldn't be relied upon by itself. How well it works is dependent on the particular frequencies emitted by the RGB components of your screen. I have a 470nm band pass filter that I look at light emitters through, and f.lux reduces such emitters, but doesn't stop them completely. I have constructed a removable orange filter as a supplement.

I actually have those goggles, but find they don't fit well over my glasses. Know of any pair designed to work with glasses?

I know flux isn't perfect. But as I don't really use my phone much before bed, it seems to work well enough. The glasses could be useful for late night computer work though.

There is a website that sells over the glasses shades for this purpose, but those are way over priced. Most anything orange stands a good chance of working. You can park an incandescent bulb behind one and look at its spectrum reflected off of a CD or DVD. Look for the blue that looks like the sky on a cloudless day. I'd buy over-glasses safety goggles from a store, then test them at home and return them until you found a pair that works.

How about a stick-on filter specifically made for iPhones? https://www.lowbluelights.com/detail.asp?id=110

For $24, you can get enough orange filter gel to make a filter for your 27" screen, then have enough left over for a couple of iPads and several iPhones.

Yes those were the two choices, jailbreak or not stare at the phone before sleep. Very perceptive, aroch.

Does being snarky make you feel better about yourself?

I find it hilarious that someone who knows that staring at a bright blue-white screen is going to impact their sleep, continues to do so. It is even more amusing to think that they'd rather drop $400+ on a new Android phone that can run lux/redshift instead of modifying their own behavoir in a trivial way.

You should not alter your lifestyle to fit the limitations of your possessions. Rather, your possessions should help you to live the way you want to. If you enjoy staring at screens at night (e.g. for reading), you should buy gadgets that enable you to do so.

This reminds me of threads on MacRumors and Apple Discussions. Someone asks how to do X with [gadget]. Someone replies that you can't do X with [gadget]. Then someone asks why you would want to X with [gadget], you're obviously using [gadget] wrong and you should buy Y to do X instead.

The rest of the thread is an argument over whether people should want to do X with [gadget]. Maybe a post explaining how to more or less do X with some hacks thrown in the middle.

You forgot the last and most important step: [gadget] version (n+1) comes out with a new feature: "Do X with [gadget]!" And suddenly everyone is so excited that they can now do that thing that was so clearly wrong to want to do before.

It sure did make me feel better about myself. Did telling that person he was using his phone wrong make you feel better about yourself?

There wasn't even a problem. "I like f.lux." "Or you could not stare at your phone." What were that poster or third party readers supposed to have gleaned from your comment, pray tell?

When someone discusses a problem that has a trivial and obvious solution that they're not using, you should consider that they may have already thought of it and found it wanting.

Let the duel of snarkiness continue.

>You could just stop staring at your iPhone before you fall asleep?

There's this big problem with technology - particularly common with people that is not familiar with it (looking at you @aroch) - where people think that you should adapt yourself to the technology around you where it should always be technology the one that should adapt to your lifestyle.

If you cook something and it tastes like shit, do you eventually become used to the taste of shit? or do you find out what happened and cook in a way that relates more to the kind of flavors that you want?

Your analogy says 'adapt yourself' which is the parents point.

Technology unfortunately cannot keep up with our desire to use it to the detriment of our own health.

technology could keep up if it's openly programmable instead of being locked down apple-style.

Interestingly ( perhaps ), in a house fitted entirely with 5600k 96%-daylight spectrum bulbs, I have no problems falling asleep nearly instantly after using a smartphone or laptop.

Perhaps you could try changing the lamp bulbs in you bedroom to daylight-spectrum so there isn't such a sharp distinction between a screen and the ambient light colour?

Could you expand on what prompted you to install those? I had thought the blue light itself was the issue. I don't know what daylight spectrum bulbs are like, but I'm assuming they emit more blue light.

So that's an interesting result.

Several years ago I started working from home more, and during the winter found myself really struggling to focus on screens and written text. It seemed to be 'vague' but my eye tests showed no deterioration.

I read online about daylight-spectrum bulbs assisting fine-work ( crafters use them extensively ) and on a hunch I bought a few bulbs. What a transformation! I found myself much more alert and better able to read.

I also like how they seamlessly transition from dusk to pure artificial light, particularly in the rooms we have painted white.

Yep, I recently got a daylight lamp for this very purpose. I point it at my face for 3-4 hours a day, and it improved my concentration a lot. Sometimes (esp. when working on a sleep deficit) the light makes me a bit tired.

Fun fact: When I turn on this lamp it makes me want to tidy up the room, after about 2 minutes. I suspect that's an effect also observed in anti-depressants.

They transition from dusk to artificial light....what does that mean?

Same. It's funny that the primary reason I haven't upgraded to iOS 7 is because I like my screen red at night. F.lux is the one tweak that I can't live without, and probably would consider a switch to Android if I couldn't make it happen on iOS.

Apple should just implement f.lux-like behaviour in OS X and iOS, maybe with an API to allow it to be disabled temporarily (for Photoshop, etc.)

> Apple should just implement f.lux-like behaviour in OS X and iOS

No. Apple should let people run the programs they want on the devices they purchased. There should be a seriously insane number of hoops to jump through to get to the switch, but the switch should be there.

These $9 orange safety glasses have worked extremely well for me over the past few years: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B000USRG90/ref=redir_mdp_mobil...

EDIT: edited for clarity

Wow, there's a real-life instance of the old "zero-gravity pen / Soviets used a pencil" legend. I think I'll pick one of those up.

Totally off topic now, but I hope you realize that this pen meme is indeed an urban legend. There are plenty of places you can find out more about it.