Iris has several types. These are some settings that many people use and I selected for you to understand how Iris works more quickly.

Type Specialty
1️⃣ Health General Health
2️⃣ Sleep No Blue light
3️⃣ Reading E-ink Grayscale
4️⃣ Programming Color Inversion
5️⃣ Biohacker Sleep + Programming
6️⃣ Sunglasses Minimize Flicker
7️⃣ Dark Reduce Light
8️⃣ Movie Improve Light
9️⃣ Overlay Color Therapy

Basically, these are some different preset values that I made.

Dedicated Articles about the different types

Presets

Bellow, you can find the values of Color Temperature and Brightness for Iris during all transition periods.

Iris Types Table

Iris Types Day Night Sleep
1️⃣ Health 5000K / 100% 3400K / 80% 2700K / 75%
2️⃣ Sleep 0K / 100% 0K / 80% 0K / 75%
3️⃣ Reading 5000K / 100% 3400K / 80% 2700K / 75%
4️⃣ Programming 5000K / 100% 3400K / 80% 2700K / 75%
5️⃣ Biohacker 0K / 100% 0K / 80% 0K / 75%
6️⃣ Sunglasses 6500K / 100% 6500K / 75% 6500K / 65%
7️⃣ Dark 5000K / 100% 3400K / 80% 2700K / 75%
8️⃣ Movie 6500K / 120% 6500K / 120% 6500K / 120%
9️⃣ Overlay 5% / 0% 40% / 10% 40% / 10%

Now, I will try to explain what every type does and when to use it.

1️⃣ Health

Day - 5000K / 100% Night - 3400K / 80% Sleep - 2700K / 75%

Health mode is the preset which I and almost all users use. It’s made for slight blue light and brightness reduction. It feels really good on the eyes and doesn’t change the colors much.

During the day Color temperature will be 5000K and Brightness will be 100%

During the night Color temperature will be 3400K and Brightness will be 80%

Health mode during the night looks like this

Use it if you have no idea what to use and just want to protect your eyes and sleep better. You can customize it a little by changing the Mode

2️⃣ Sleep

Day - 0K / 100% Night - 0K / 80% Sleep - 0K / 75%

Sleep mode is for the best sleep. It will remove all the blue light from your screen and set the Color temperature to 0K.

It is not exactly 0K, because zero kelvins are absolute black, but it removes all blue and green light and your screen will look like this

During the day the Brightness will be 100% and during the night it will gradually change to 80%.

Use sleep mode when you want to get to sleep in the fastest amount of time after using your PC.

3️⃣ Reading

Day - 5000K / 100% Night - 3400K / 80% Sleep - 2700K / 75% Screen effect - Grayscale

Reading mode will make all your colors black and white like E-ink device.

I made it as a joke to show people how to turn any monitor into E-ink device, but it actually became really popular and I found some science why this is healthy.

It came out from conversation with one user and he told me that there is actually a bigger problem than PWM and this is the subpixel flicker and changing polarity of the backlight.

We first tried to make Color overlay with random colors, but it turned out that this is worsened the subpixel flicker. Grayscale mode or the Reading mode was actually the solution for this.

I think this is the best mode for eye protection, because it makes the screen most healthy. It removes blue light, PWM and subpixel flicker.

On Windows 7 you need to enable Aero to get Reading mode to work.

4️⃣ Programming

Day - 5000K / 100% Night - 3400K / 80% Sleep - 2700K / 75% Screen effect - Inversion

Ever read white pages for hours and wished you had a black theme. Well I made programming mode, because one of my editors didn’t have a black theme and I was cursing it a lot.

Programming mode will invert your screen colors. It looks like this

So for example if you want to read this page with black theme

Using Programming mode will make it like this

I personally use this mode when I write something in editor with White theme and I am sure you will find your way. The bad thing is that pictures will be inverted also, but you will probably not look at pictures when you use Programming mode.

5️⃣ Biohacker

Day - 0K / 100% Night - 0K / 80% Sleep - 0K / 75% Screen effect - Inversion

Biohacker is the combination of inverted colors and no blue light. You can say that it’s the combination between Sleep and Programming mode.

Biohacker mode looks like this

Use it if you want to hack your sleep somehow. Pause and activate it and measure your melatonin levels. This is not made for everybody, but use Biohacker mode if you like it.

6️⃣ Sunglasses

Day - 6500K / 100% Night - 6500K / 75% Sleep - 6500K / 65%

Sunglasses mode will only decrease the brightness during the night and not touch the blue light. The reason for this is because some people use blue blocking glasses to block the blue light instead of Iris and they prefer their screen colors to be more real.

Blue-blocking glasses are really hot today, but they actually do the same work like regular sunglasses which also block blue and UV light.

Sunglasses mode looks like this

Use it if you wear blue blocking glasses or sunglasses in front of the screen and don’t want Iris to touch the blue light emitted from your screen. Iris will only reduce the brightness without PWM during the night for less eye strain.

7️⃣ Dark

Day - 5000K / 100% Night - 3400K / 80% Sleep - 2700K / 75%

Opacity - 30% Radius - 30% X - center Y - center

Dark mode will make the corners of the screen more dark and will reduce the light emitted from the screen. This is usefull if you want full brightness, but still want less light.

It will also use the Health preset as values for blue light and brightness.

Dark mode looks like this

Use it when you want less light emitted from the screen, but still want your brightness to be high value.

8️⃣ Movie

Day - 6500K / 120% Night - 6500K / 120% Sleep - 6500K / 120%

So I was watching one scary movie and all the scenes were dark. I put my monitor at maximum brightness, but still it was too dark to see anything. I then closed Iris, but it was again too dark and my eyes got strained.

Then an idea came into my mind. What if I can increase the brightness over the maximum? The next day I tried to accomplish this and I did it.

Basically Movie mode will pause all Iris color changes and will set the Brightness to 120%

This is how Movie mode looks like

And here is a scene from Star Wars with normal screen and with Movie mode

9️⃣ Overlay

Day opacity - 5% Day dim - 0% Night opacity - 40% Night dim - 10%

I made Overlay mode for computers which don’t allow color changes on low-level or any color changes at all. Overlay mode places transparent overlay over the whole screen and it looks like this

You may think why do you need this, but there are several cases when this mode is useful.

Use overlay mode if you want all your colors to be as close to normal as possible, but still want to protect your eyes and have good night sleep.

Use overlay mode if you have multiple monitors connected with USB or with some docking station. On strange configurations like this, Overlay mode and High-level Color API are the only ways to get Iris running on all monitors.


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