I read your earlier article about why filtering out blue light on a computer is important, particularly at night, but don’t know how to enable it on my Chromebook. Running the latest Chrome OS…
Slowly but surely all the computer manufacturers, gadget developers, and operating system programmers are getting the message: low frequency (blue) light from the screens we view interferes with the melatonin production in our brain and consequently has adverse effects on sleep. You’ve probably said it yourself; “I can’t seem to turn off my brain”. That’s how our brains are designed; the bright light of morning is supposed to increase alertness and get us ready for the day. But at 11pm? Not so much.
Fortunately, Chrome OS supports blue light filtering, calling it “night light”, and even has a button on the shortcut window in expanded mode. Of course, you have to know about it and why you’d want to enable it, but you sound like someone who already has this figured out. What I most prefer is to have it enabled by schedule, typically sunset to sunrise, so that I don’t have to think about it. Because it’s automatic, I then very rarely even notice it’s turned on, which is ideal. The only time that’s important is if you’re editing photos: Knowing whether you’re in a warmer “night” mode versus a cooler “day” mode will affect your color adjustments. For the rest of us, though, Web pages still look the same, Word docs are still readable, and email can still be answered in either mode!
TURN ON NIGHT LIGHT MODE IN CHROMEOS SHORTCUTS
To start out, let me show you the shortcut that’s probably just a tap or click away. Click on the right corner of your Shelf and a small shortcuts window pops up:
No, there’s no button here, but if you expand the window by clicking on the “^” on the top right, the expanded view does include access to Night Light:
You can see it on the lower right of the button grid, a sort of reverse crescent moon. Click on it and you’ll enable “Night Light“. Click on it again and it’ll be disabled. That’s also how you can do photo editing with color correction even late at night when your system would otherwise have Night Light blue light filtering enabled!
Turns out that there are more options in Settings, however, so let’s jump to that. Just click on the Settings icon.
ENABLE AND SCHEDULE NIGHT LIGHT ON A CHROMEBOOK
Instead of digging around in Settings, use the handy Settings search feature and look for “night”:
“Night Light”. That’s the one. Click or tap on it and you’ll be instantly moved to the correct spot in the Settings utility:
You can change your display size while you’re here, but Night Light is our focus, right? 🙂
You can instantly turn on – or off – Night Light with the switch control, but as I said, scheduling Night Light is really the win. Click where it says “Never” and you’ll find that there are a couple of options:
As I said earlier, I tend to just choose “Sunset to sunrise” knowing that it’ll automatically adjust summer vs winter. A “set and forget” option, for sure. But maybe you want to pick your on and off times. No worries, choose “Custom” and you’ll have a slider control:
In this instance, the default is 6:00 pm to 6:00 am, which is probably never going to quite be sunset and sunrise in your location. Adjust this as desired and remember it’s just a click or two away if you want to adjust it as the seasons change and your day and night durations change.
That’s it. I highly encourage you to enable Night Light, either manually, sunset-to-sunrise, or on a schedule. You’ll see, it makes a difference, especially if you’re a late night computer user.
Pro Tip: I’ve been writing about operating systems for many years. You can find a lot more useful tutorials about Chrome OS in my Chrome OS and Chromebook help library here on the site. Why not check it out while you’re visiting?