All our devices now offer a dark mode and an evening light filter — Night Shift on iPhone and Mac, Night light on Windows, Eye comfort on Android. We switch them on thinking we're “protecting our eyes”. What's the reality?
Dark mode: a question of legibility
Dark mode inverts the colours: light text on a dark background. It has no proven “protective” effect on the eyes, but it changes comfort depending on the context:
- In the evening or in a dark room, it saves you from staring at a big bright white background: less glare, less light emitted.
- In broad daylight, in a bright room, a light background is generally still more legible for long texts.
- For people with astigmatism, white text on a black background can look blurry or “bleed”; light grey on dark grey is often more comfortable.
The right setting: automatic mode, which switches to dark at sunset.
Night Shift and evening filters: a small nudge
These filters shift the screen's colours towards orange in the evening, to reduce its share of blue light. The idea is logical: evening light delays melatonin, the sleep hormone. But studies are cautious. A study published in 2021 in the journal Sleep Health found no clear improvement in sleep with Night Shift alone in young adults; what mattered most was how long the phone was used before sleeping.
Why such a modest effect? Because the filter only acts on the screen, not on the room's light, and the screen stays bright. Switch it on anyway, on automatic: it's free, has no downside, and reminds you that it's late.
Brightness matters more than colour
A screen at 100% brightness in night mode emits more light than a normal screen at 30%. The two most effective settings are also the simplest:
- auto-brightness, so the screen follows the room;
- low brightness in the evening, at the lowest comfortable level.
Where glasses go further
An amber or orange-tinted lens filters the blue light from everything you look at: the screen, but also the ceiling light, the TV, the desk lamp. That's something night mode can't do. For evening screen time in a lit room, it's a logical addition: SAFRAN (amber lenses), DUNE or BRAISE (orange lenses). The evidence on sleep remains modest: we suggest an honest two-week test in our article on sleep.
During the day, however, there's no need for a tint: clear anti-reflective lenses like MIDI are enough, and keep colours accurate.
The winning combination
- Daytime: auto-brightness, a light theme if the room is bright, clear lenses if you like.
- After sunset: dark mode and evening filter on automatic, low brightness, dimmed room lighting.
- Late evening: tinted lenses if the screen stays on, and a stop time.
None of these settings replaces breaks or an eye test if discomfort persists. But together, they make evening screen time much gentler.