Top 8 Best Apps to Manage Brightness and Save Your Eyes on Android
Eye strain is a huge issue for those of us who spend a lot of time looking at screens – whether those screens are a desktop monitor, a television, or even a smartphone. Improper screen brightness settings can cause your eyes to fatigue faster, and overly bright screens at night can make it difficult to fall asleep. With these android brightness apps, those worries will be in the past – at least when it comes to your Android phone.
Research has shown that blue-light exposure (the kind you get from electronic screens) at night can disrupt your circadian rhythm, a biological process involved with sleep cycles. Wouldn’t it be great if there was an android brightness app that reduced, or even eliminated, this impact? What about apps that kept your eyeballs from being blinded by overly bright screens when you’re in the dark?
Well, they exist, and they have the potential to change your life. Check out these apps and start reaping the benefits right away.
Note: Keep in mind that having multiple brightness apps can result in compatibility and control issues. For best results, try these one at a time.
Lux
Lux is one of the best android brightness apps I’ve ever encountered. Its best feature is its auto-brightness adjustment, which senses the lighting of your environment and adjusts your screen’s brightness to optimal levels for visibility and battery life. But unlike Android’s default auto-brightness, which is sorely lacking in configurability, Lux gives you all the power.
One thing I love about Lux is that it can do sub-zero brightness. Sometimes Android’s lowest brightness setting is too bright – especially when you’re in a dark room. Lux can go even darker than that. It comes with a widget that you can use for quick control changes to the brightness settings. Lux even comes with built-in support for Tasker and Locale.
For $2.98 USD, you can upgrade to Lux’s pro version and unlock some extra features: using the camera to read ambient light, advanced power-user settings for precision control, astronomer mode for stargazers, and automatic night mode for time-based color temperature control, showing warmer colors at night.
Twilight
You may have heard of F.lux – if not, you’re in for a treat. F.lux automatically dampens the harsh light of your monitor into warmer shades of red-orange depending on the time of day, where the dampening grows stronger as it gets later in the night. Twilight is an app that does something similar for your Android. If you use your phone late at night or before you sleep, you really need this.
Twilight works by taking your location (which can be set manually or detected automatically) and using sunrise and sunset times as indicators for dampening your screen. After sunset, Twilight will begin to dampen your screen’s color temperature using a combination of blue-light filtering and warmthy intensity.
For $2.54 USD, you can upgrade to Twilight Pro and unlock the Pro settings: custom sunrise time, custom sunset time, and custom transition time (the time it takes to fade from no-dampening to full-dampening when you hit sunrise or sunset times).
Velis
Velis also gives you a graph (ambient light reading along the X-axis, screen brightness along the Y-axis) and allows you full control over what the auto-brightness graph should look like at every point. At such-and-such light reading, you can set the brightness for A; at so-and-so light reading, brightness B. Velis fills in the gaps with its graph. This is a degree of control similar to that you find in Lux.
Other great features you’ll find in Velis: superdimming (even darker than Android’s default minimum brightness), excluded apps (Velis won’t run when these apps are in focus), multiple profiles for different auto-brightness graphs, and support for Tasker and Locale.
Backlight! Widget
In Android, brightness values range from 1 (darkest) to 255 (brightest). The app allows you to declare your own list of brightness values, separated by commas, and it will cycle through this list whenever you tap the widget icon on your home screen. It’s a simple solution to a non-critical problem, but it works and I like it.
Note: Does not work on Sense UI devices. Potential compatibility issues with Juice Defender.
Night Mode
‘Night Mode’ is a very simple application that will override your system’s display settings so you can reduce brightness of your screen below normal levels. ‘Night Mode’ applies an overlay filter that acts as a dimmer to darken the screen and ensure it won’t hurt your eyes.
This is especially useful when you are using your phone in a low-light surroundings, such as cinema or theatre. ‘Night Mode’ is a free ad-supported applciation.
EasyEyes Free
You can use the automatic scheduler to set the time and the program would do its work each night. It even sets the times depending on the sunrise and sunset, no matter which corner of the world you are.
Blue Light Filter for Eye Care
Blue Light Filter for Eye Care app filters blue light out from Android smartphones’ screens, helping you to feel more comfortable, relaxed, and to fall asleep more easily. This app doesn’t dim the screen but adjusts the screen color to reduce blue light which causes strain on your eyes. It’s easy to turn on or off the app with just one tap.
The app includes five filters to choose from: Natural, Yellow, Brown, Purple and Light Dark, which of all can filter 0-80% of blue light emitting from the Android phones and tablets. You’re allowed to select filters whatever you like according to your surroundings. You can adjust the opacity of the filter.
You can choose to show or hide a filter icon in the status bar, making it easy to tweak the settings at any time.
F.lux
F.lux finally launched on Android earlier this year with an initial beta test. The company, which began back in 2009, already offers its sleep-saving service for Mac, PC, Linux and jailbroken iOS devices, but until recently it wasn’t available for Google’s massively popular mobile operating system.
To try out the beta you’ll need a rooted Android phone. Then sign up for a F.lux forum account and request to join the test group. Once you’re approved you can install the app using an official list of instructions provided by the company.
F.lux already faces some competition from other Android apps. A few other apps likeTwilight also promise to change the color of light emitted by your display from blue to an orange hue at night. However, Twilight simply applies a red filter on top, while F.lux actually removes the blue light from each individual pixel.
The team behind F.lux previously said it wasn’t possible to implement its technology on Android, but it sounds like the company may have found a solution. Hopefully it won’t be too long before we see an official app hit the Google Play store.
Conclusion
Screen brightness is one of those things where you don’t realize just how much of an impact it has on your daily life until someone shows you. I used to think the fuss over it was all hogwash until I tried it for myself – suddenly, my eyes were less fatigued and my sleep pattern normalized. Don’t underestimate the usefulness of the apps above!
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