Tech Tip: Twilight for Android

If you’re anything like me, you are constantly using your tablet or smartphone when it’s close to bedtime.  Or maybe if you wake up in the middle of the night, you feel like you have to check your phone before going back to sleep.  (I am certain I am not the only one doing this.)  But that leads to a couple of problems.  First, shining the bright light in your eyes as you are preparing to sleep or go back to sleep can extend the time it takes to get to sleep by an hour, because the bright light shining into your eyes affects your sleep cycle.  Second, your significant other is never happy when all of a sudden your room is lit up like the 4th of July.  But if are using an Android phone or tablet, I have the solution for you.

Twilight is an app from the Urbandroid Team that allows you to automatically adjust the brightness of your screen during those nighttime hours so that your phone or tablet is completely usable but without the bright light shining in your eyes or around the room.  A win for everyone.

Below are screenshots from my Nexus 7 with and without Twilight running.  To be honest, I don’t think the screen shots do Twilight justice.  You don’t really feel like you have a huge yellow, or pink, cast to the screen even though the screen shots make it seem that way.

Twilight is easy to setup. When you open the app for the first time, you will be taken to the settings page. From the settings page, you will set your location so that Twilight knows when it should be be active and you can change the look of the Twilight color as you can see the two screenshots in this article have different looks for Twilight.

Since I started using Twilight a few weeks ago, I actually don’t like using devices at night that don’t use it because the screens just seem way to bright. I definitely recommend giving Twilight a chance. I think you will be glad you did.