6 useful tips for anyone working on a Mac at night

1. Adjust the brightness level

Apple computers are equipped with bright displays that reproduce colors perfectly and make reading text as comfortable as reading from a sheet of paper. However, at night or in other conditions of insufficient lighting, this does more harm than good.

To avoid eye fatigue, it is best to manually adjust the brightness level rather than relying on automatic adjustments based on the light sensor. Use the F1 and F2 buttons to adjust the display backlight so that it is only slightly brighter than your lamp. The darker it is in the room, the lower the brightness of the display should be.

To work in complete darkness, when even at the minimum level the screen still shines too brightly, you can use the special Shady utility. It darkens the display by overlaying a semi-transparent layer.

2. Set a lower resolution

Working on a Mac at night: Set a lower resolution

In addition to the standard double the resolution, Retina displays also allow you to select an upscaled one to fit more content on the screen. Many users use this option. But too small text and interface elements force your eyes to strain, which is more pronounced in the evening.

To remedy the situation, you can set a lower screen resolution when it becomes necessary to work late. To do this, go to "Settings" → "Monitors", select the scaled resolution on the "Monitor" tab and set the default value or lower.

3. Adjust Night Shift

Working on a Mac at night: Set up Night Shift

The cold blue glow of the screen not only causes disturbances in circadian rhythms and problems with falling asleep, but also severely hurts the eyes when working in the dark. The problem is so common that macOS even has a built-in feature to change the color tones of the screen.

It's called Night Shift and it automatically adjusts the color temperature based on the time of day. During the day, the picture on the screen remains unchanged, and in the evening it becomes warmer and more pleasant to the eye. To enable Night Shift, go to Settings → Monitors → Night Shift and choose to start on the “Dusk Till Dawn” schedule or by time.

For these purposes, you can also use the popular f.lux utility, which existed long before Night Shift appeared in macOS. It contains much more settings and allows you to set not only the schedule, but also exceptions for individual programs, as well as suspend work for a certain period.

4. Use dark mode

In macOS Mojave, Apple has added the long-awaited dark mode of the interface, which is a sin not to use in the evening. By default, it is enabled only manually, but for convenience it is better to automate this process.

After installing the NightOwl utility, you can configure the automatic change of the interface design depending on the time of day. With the onset of dusk, the application will turn on the dark theme, and in the morning it will automatically switch to the light one.

5. Set a dark wallpaper

Working on a Mac at night: Set a dark wallpaper

You can complement the effect of the night theme by using the corresponding desktop wallpaper. So they will not hurt the eyes and get out of the general design. Any with a predominance of dark tones will do. A black background will also work.

MacOS Mojave users can use a dynamic desktop, a special wallpaper that changes lighting throughout the day. You can install them by opening "Settings" → "Desktop and screensaver", and then selecting one of the pictures in the "Dynamic desktop background" section. By default, there are only two of them, but if you wish, it's easy to add more.

6. Add dark mode to your browser

Working on a Mac at night: Add dark mode to your browser

Most websites are still not adapted to dark mode and will hit you in the eye when navigating to the browser from other applications. As a solution, you can use Safari's reading mode with a night theme, or install a special Dark Reader extension.

Working on a Mac at night: Install the Dark Reader extension

It is available for Safari, Chrome, Opera and Firefox. In all browsers, Dark Reader works on a similar principle, changing the background and colors on the pages to dark. The intensity and contrast can be adjusted as desired, there is also the ability to add specific sites to exclusions.