For what seems like a year, my husband and I have been up nights tending to children with flu, colds, and tummy aches.
It’s really the only way that toddlers can get back at parents for the making children go through the birthing process. Being up at night also means not sleeping, which means sitting in front of the glare of this Mac or that Mac and having eyes tortured by modern technology. Night vision to the rescue.
Night Vision On Your Mac
After nursing, quieting, or comforting a child at 2:00 in the morning, and seeing the blessed little creatures drift off into a sleepy bliss, what can I do?
Going back to sleep is a problem.
So, fire up the Mac, adjust droopy eyes to the glare of our wonderful LED backlit screens, and suffer, right?
Maybe, just maybe, someone has a better way to use a Mac in the darkness of night. That’s what RedScreen does. It’s night vision for your Mac.
What is night vision?
Night vision is the ability to see in a dark environment. Whether by biological or technological means, night vision is made possible by a combination of two approaches: sufficient spectral range, and sufficient intensity range.
RedScreen is a Mac utility which works a number of ways to darken the screen’s glare, and preserve your eyesight in a darkened environment. For me, sleep would do better but that’s the solution that’s part of the problem.
Apparently, the color red affects our night vision less than other colors in the spectrum. I’ve always wonder why the lighting was so poor in submarines in the movies. It’s dark for a reason.
RedScreen turns your Mac’s screen red, and can darken the screen, too, by reducing the backlighting (the light behind what you see on your Mac’s screen). Colors get darkened, too.
All that’s required is to fire up RedScreen, play with the settings—adjusting to a hue and darkness that works for you—after you click the Activate RedScreen button.
The sliders control Redness, Dimming, and the amount of Backlight. There’s even an option to modify your Mac’s screensaver behavior so it doesn’t interfere with RedScreen (after all, who wants to look away from a red-dimmed screen and turn back a few minutes later to loud, bright photos of the very children who make it possible to be awake at that hour).
The whole process is super simple. And free.
RedScreen controls your Mac’s video so you’ll get the red screen in every Mac application as long as RedScreen is running. If red isn’t your thing, there’s also a setting for using grayscale.
At 3:00 in the morning our home is a bit like a submarine—it’s dark, but there’s little colored lights everywhere. RedScreen simply lets you use your Mac with less eyestrain than the full on glare of a bright screen.
Not bad for free, huh? Now, if only they could get that red screen to come on automatically and sing a lullaby.
About Alexis Kayhill
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