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From this page, you can select the amount of Blue Light and Screen Brightness that is being emitted from your screen during the sleep hours that you’ve set

This way you can have a specific amount of Blue Light and Screen Brightness at a specific time of day/night that you want

From the first two options you can select the amount of Blue Light and Brightness that is going to be emitted from your monitor during the selected hours

These settings will kick in as soon as the time you’ve selected comes

Here you can select the time where the settings will be activated

Bedtime is basically the time these settings begin

In this specific case it will begin at 12:00 AM and will end at 04:00 AM because that’s when the Wake time is set for

From this button you can Enable/Disable these settings

If your other settings are not working at some specific times it might be exactly because the sleep settings are enabled, so if that’s the cause you can also set the trigger to OFF and they will stop working

In any other case you can just click it and it will set to ON and the settings will work

This is a short video explanation that you can also watch:

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From the Transition page, you can set the duration of different smooth transitions.

The transition is the time when Iris goes between day and night mode for example.

The longer the transition the more smooth the colors will change to more orange and red or too bright screen.

Some people like instant transition why others prefer the transition to be several hours.

From here you can set it to whatever value you like.

With Day Transition you can set the duration of time when Iris goes from Night to Day mode.

This is typically the time early in the morning. You can check when is the Day transition start and end time form the Transition times infobox.

With Night Transition you can set the duration of time when Iris goes from Day to Night mode.

This is typically the time when the sun is down. You can check when the Night transition start is an end time form the Transition times infobox.

With Sleep Transition you can set the duration of time when Iris goes Sleep mode.

This is the time which is set from the Sleep page. You can check when is the Bedtime transition start and end time form the Transition times infobox.

With Pause Transition, you can customize the time in which Iris goes from Pause to Resume.

This is both when you manually pause and resume Iris or when Color pausers are used.

With the Preview Transitions button, you can preview the transition that you’ve set and how they will look like.

When you click it Iris will fast forward 24 hours showing you how your screen will change in those 24 hours based on the settings that you’ve set

This is useful when you want to test your settings now, instead of having to wait to see them through the day

Transition times infobox shows you all info about when a day, night, bedtime, waketime starts and ends.

It shows you sunset, sunrise and all information Iris uses to automatically adjust during the different time of the day.

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There is a slight shift during the night depending on if it’s happening during a Full Moon or a New Moon

Iris takes that into account and automatically adjusts to it but from this setting, you can change and customize it the way you want it to be

During a Full Moon, it takes us a bit more time to fall asleep and sleep is shortened with about 20 minutes on average

From this setting, you can change the duration of the Full Moon offset

During the New Moon, associated with less moonlight, there is a known effect on lowering the melatonin levels

From this setting, you can change the duration of the New Moon offset

Here you can see the Raw transition times of the day, night and all moon offsets

This graph represents the time to fall asleep and the relation it has with moon phases

The different color-coded symbols depict the different gender and age groups: pink for young women, blue for young men, white for older women, and gray for older men.

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From this page, you can customize the amount of blue light emitted from your screen.

Basically lower values and less blue light means better sleep and less eye strain.

The Day and Night Light sliders may seem to have strange values, but the lower the value the less blue light. These values will correspond to the color temperature values of the screen.

K or Kelvins and is the default measure for color temperature.

Light of 100% is no color changes and calibrated display.

Day Temperature is the temperature of the display during the day.

Night Temperature is the temperature of the display during the night.

Iris determines if it’s day or night based on your location or on your system clock. Then it does gradual interpolation between the 2 values when the time is right.

You can change the default location from the Location page.

Extended values will allow you to select values over 6500 K.

Some people use this as some kind of caffeine mode when they don’t want to fall asleep at night. Values over 6500 K have over the maximum blue light so be careful. These values will not help you fall asleep faster.

• This is how Iris looks at 100% (No blue light reduction)
  • 
• At 0% (Maximum blue light reduction)
  • 
• And at 150% (Over the maximum blue light)
  • 

I don’t use 10 000K, because my head starts to hurt, but some people use it when they want to put all-nighters.

When Manual Light is set to ON, Night Temperature will be used both during the day and during the night. This way it’s easier to change the temperature fast by hand.

If Keyboard shortcuts are enabled you can use also use

Ctrl+Alt+↑ to increase the Night Temperature and

Ctrl+Alt+↓ to decrease the Night Temperature

This is Up and Down arrow found next to the left to the Enter and right Ctrl key and left to the Num pad. The step is 500 K and the temperature can be set from 0 K to 6500 K. For other values use the sliders.

Reset temperature does something which you may think it’s strange, but it’s useful in some situations. Basically, if you killed Iris somehow your screen may be red without Iris running. Reset temperature will fix this, but will also remove your display calibration.

Invert colors will invert the colors like this

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From the Color Scheme panel you can select one of the color pre-sets that control how the different values of Color Temperature and Brightness are displayed on the screen.

Each pre-set color scheme will change the appearance of the screen whilst maintaining the same Color Temperature. This is useful in controlling transition duration and blue light reduction.

You can select different color schemes from the Color Scheme dropdown menu.

The images below show how the different color schemes look at 3400 K color temperature and 80% brightness. The current color schemes are

Iris is the default color scheme which I have measured with various devices and is the closest to the real color temperature of most light sources. It has gradual interpolation through all values and has reduction of both blue and green color in the lower values. It looks orange in the high values and red in the low values.

Magmus is a color scheme with faster transition to red color. It shifts more quickly than Iris to the red values of the color spectrum and also has both blue and green color reduction. Magmus is the best color scheme for biohackers.

Users have reported that the colors of Iris are markedly different from the values of the popular software f.lux. The reason for this is that f.lux prioritizes better sleep through blue light reduction over visual appearance. Olaf is my attempt to add more yellow to the f.lux values. If you like f.lux but need more custom control, Olaf provides a compromise solution.

Groot

Groot does something that no other blue-light reduction software does. You can see how colors are more green with Groot. The reason for this is that Groot doesn’t care about Color Temperature, instead it just gradually removes blue light. All other schemes remove both blue and green colors in lower values. Groot removes only blue color and blue light and you will still see green just fine.

As you can guess, I use the Iris color scheme, but some people like Magmus, some like Olaf and some like Groot. Experiment and find the best scheme for you.

Aside from this, you can also change the leading color for each color scheme from the Leading Color dropdown menu.

The Leading color is the color which doesn’t change when you reduce the Color Temperature. This is just for experimenting with the effect on light on human biology and most people will not use it.

By default the leading color is Red and it looks like this:

Green leading color looks like this:

and Blue looks like this:

Don’t use the blue leading color if you want better sleep. Science says that high amounts of blue light reduce the secretion of your sleep hormone Melatonin.

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With the Brightness Extended values checkbox you can unlock more values for Brightness.

Most users will probably not need to click this checkbox.

Values of Brightness over 100% exceed maximum brightness.

By default the values are between 5% and 100%

With Extended values checked the values will become between 5% and 150%.

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With the Night Brightness slider you can set the Brightness during the night.

Iris detects if it’s day or night based on the clock and location.

If you don’t see change when you move this slider make sure that it’s night.

The values are based on % which is the standard measure for Brightness.

The lower the value the darker the screen, the higher the value the brighter the screen.

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With the Day Brightness slider you can set the Brightness during the day.

Iris detects if it’s day or night based on the clock and location.

If you don’t see change when you move this slider make sure that Manual brightness is set to OFF and it’s day.

The values are based on % which is the standard measure for Brightness.

The lower the value the darker the screen, the higher the value the brighter the screen.

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With the Color Temperature Extended values checkbox you can unlock more values for Color Temperature.

While this has something useful behind it you probably don’t need to click this checkbox.

Values of Color Temperature of over 6500K actually has more than the maximum blue light and are not healthy.

By default the values are between 0K and 6500K

With Extended values checked the values will become between 0K and 10000K

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With Night Temperature slider you select the Color Temperature of the screen during the Night.

Iris detects if it’s day or night based on the clock and location. If you don’t see change when you move this slider it’s probably day.

The value is measured in K (Kelvins) and this is the standard unit for Color Temperature.

The lower the value the less blue light is emitted from the screen.

The bigger the value the more light is emitted from the screen.

Basically high values are bad for the eyes and sleep and low values are good.

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With the Day Temperature slider you can set the Color Temperature during the day.

Iris detects if it’s day or night based on the clock and location.

If you don’t see change when you move this slider make sure that Manual color settings is set to OFF and it’s day.

The values are based on K (Kelvins) which is the standard measure for Color Temperature.

The lower the value the less blue light, the higher the value the more blue light is emitted from the screen.

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From this page you can change Iris language by selecting language from the dropdown.

As I have the capacity to only transalte Iris in English and Bulgarian I have used translators for most other languages and some translations may be incorrect.

If you don’t see your native language in this dropdown or want to fix some of the translations see

How to Translate Iris

My goal is to make Iris translated into every human language and you can help for this too 🙂

Here is video showing the current available Languages

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From this page you can customize the screen brightness. Iris brightness is different from your monitor hardware brightness, because it doesn’t use PWM to control the light emitted from the screen.

Basically you need to put your hardware brightness to the MAX and control the Brightness of the screen with this sliders.

Be careful, because it can go down to really low values.

Day Brightness is the Brightness of the screen during the day.

Night Brightness is the Brightness of the screen during the night.

Iris determines if it’s day or night based on your location or on your system clock. Then it does gradual interpolation between the 2 values when the time is right.

You can change the default location from the Location page.

Extended values will allow you to select values over 100% brightness.

I use brightness over 100% when I watch dark movies and this is how Movie mode is working. Movie mode sets the brightness to 120%.

This is how Iris looks at 100% brightness (no brightness reduction)

At 5% (Maximum brightness reduction)

And at 150% (Over the maximum brightness)

As I said be careful with the lower values, because the screen will become really dark. I use over the maximum brightness when I watch movies and there are dark scenes and use around 60% brightness at night without the lights in the room on.

When Manual brightness is set to ON, Night Brightness will be used both during the day and during the night. This way it’s easier to change the brightness fast by hand.

If Keyboard shortcuts are enabled you can use also use

Ctrl+Alt+PgUp to increase the Brightness and

Ctrl+Alt+PgDown to decrease the Brightness

This are Page up and Page down key and the step of the change is 10%

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The Timer is used to remind you to take breaks from the computer and look at distant objects. There are several different modes

Off

The timer is stopped and there will be no break reminding.

Normal

Normal mode looks like this

By default every 30 minutes this screen will be shown with countdown timer. You can change work and rest time from the Timer page

Strict

Strict mode doesn’t have this Skip rest button and can’t be skipped. Use it to force yourself to get up, but be careful not to lock your PC for long period of time.

Strict mode looks like this and can’t be skipped

Productive

Productive mode is one nice Pomodoro timer which can easily switched from rest to work. As the name it’s make for people who use work and rest combinations for productivity

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If you have a license and want to re-activate on new PC

• You can do this from our User Panel

Buying and activating

When you buy Iris Pro from the Buy Page you can enter your activation code in this box and when you click Activate code your Iris will become Iris Pro.

The steps to buying Iris Pro are like this

Go to the Buy Page

Click Buy now button

Pay with PayPal

Now wait several seconds to be redirected to the Iris website

You will see a screen like this with your activation code

You will also get an e-mail in your inbox

Enter the above code into Iris and click activate code

Your Iris is now Pro

Notice how the icon becomes green. You know that Iris is Pro when the icon becomes green. Now you can tweak all settings in the Advanced view

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

• https://iristech.co/health-mode/
• https://iristech.co/sleep-mode/
• https://iristech.co/reading-mode/
• https://iristech.co/biohacker-mode/
• https://iristech.co/programming-mode/
• https://iristech.co/movie-mode/
• https://iristech.co/design-mode/

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

Iris vs Iris Pro

The presets are a little different in different models of Iris. In Iris Pro all reduction is stronger and closer to the best possible eye protection. Bellow, you can find the values of Color Temperature and Brightness for both Iris and Iris Pro during all transition periods.

Iris

Iris Pro

You see how in Iris Pro you have better values for Blue light and Brightness – 6000K vs 5000K, 4400K vs 3400K, 3700K vs 2700K, 85% vs 80%, 75% vs 70%, etc.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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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Iris has 3 modes
– Automatic
– Manual
– Paused

With this page I want to explain when to use them and what they mean.

Automatic

Automatic mode uses your clock and location and automatically sets Iris between the day and night settings.

During the day your screen will will be more bright and with more blue light and during the night the brightness will be decreased and many of the blue light will be removed.

During the night the screen will also be more yellow going to red. This is normal and the reason for this is because Iris is removing the blue light from your screen so you can fall asleep faster.

Use this mode if you don’t know what to use. Use it also if you want everything to happen automatically and don’t open Iris much.

This is how Automatic mode looks in 3 PM

And this is how it looks at 10 PM

Manual

Manual mode uses the night time settings all the time. Blue light and brightness will be decreased.

It’s useful if you don’t have sunlight coming in your room during the day or you just like Iris to be ON all the time.

Use it when you want lower blue light and brightness all the time.

Manual mode looks like this all the time

Paused

Paused mode will stop all Iris color changes and will return your display to calibrated colors. Iris preserves color calibration if you have calibrated display and Paused mode will revert your monitor to calibrated display.

Use it when you want exact colors, for example when you paint something or when you just watch and enjoy some movie or game in all the colors and have the best experience.

In Paused mode Iris is basically stopped and there is no eye protection. Blue light is also present and it will be hard for you to get to sleep fast. Note this when you use it at night.

You know Iris is paused when the icon is yellow

Paused mode looks like this. Notice how the white is perfect white

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This happens only on Windows when you have activated Iris mini immediately without restarting your PC.

When Iris mini starts for the first time it will display you window like this.

And you have clicked No. Close Iris mini. Then open it again and click Yes.

Now you will see this

Restart your PC and all values will be enabled. 🙂

For manual expanding download this file

For reverting this expanding download this file

Double click it and start it. Then restart your PC.

I get an error

If for some reason you get this error, download and install vcredist_x86_2013.

I get an error on Mac

If you get something like “App can’t be opened because it is from an unidentified developer”

See this video

Linux

Fixing Iris and Iris mini on Xubuntu

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From this page you can see the details about which version you are using.

Clicking the version row will open the post with Changelog notes

Clicking the Website link will also open the Iris website 🙂

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In the Artificial intelligence page you can enable some really nice features and inovations I have integrated into Iris. Most of them are disabled by default for several reasons.

Some of them use the Camera and it will be super creepy if you install software for the first time and the Camera is ON. I can asure you that the camera is used just, because this is the only way to make some features working and nobody wants to watch you. Everything happens on your computer and no one has any access to your camera.

Some of them use a lot of CPU. This is deal breaker for people with old or slow PCs.

Some of them like the blink detection are still experimental and doesn’t work quite good.

Aside from this Smart brightness for example is awesome. It works really well and don’t use a lot of CPU. My goal now is to explain what each feature does and if you like it just enable it 🙂

Enable Camera

If you have Camera connected to your PC this button will enable it

Features like Automatic brightness and Blink detection will not work if your camera is disabled and they will not turn it ON automatically. You need to manually enable your Camera. The reason for this is respecting the user privacy.

When you want to disable your Camera click Disable Camera

And the Camera input will be disabled

Automatic brightness

If you have Camera and your camera is enabled this feature will match your monitor brightness to the detected lightness in the room. The lightness is detected by processing your camera input from time to time and calculating the brightness of the input.

A slow transition will happen when the lightness level is changed a lot for example if you turn of the lights during the night. It will take 10 to 15 seconds for the brightness to slowly adapt.

For this feature to work your Camera should be enabled.

Smart brightness

Smart brightness will analyze your screen and will change your screen brightness with calculated brightness modifier.

Basically when you open black theme applications your Screen will become brighter and when you open white theme applications your screen will become darker. The difference is little, but this is small nice feature which will help your eyes hurt even less 🙂

This feature doesn’t require your Camera to be enabled.

Smart inversion

Like Smart brightness, Smart inversion will also analyze your screen contents, but instead of changing the brightness when the screen has white colors it will invert the Screen colors. I personally don’t use this, but I made it for people with eye problems and I know of several thousand people who use this feature.

This feature doesn’t require Camera to be enabled.

Blink detection

Blink detection will use AI and the input from your Camera to detect how often you blink. It doesn’t work perfectly and is still a lot of experimental, but it will be nice if someday works perfectly.

Blink detection will also use a lot of CPU, because it needs to monitor your eyes constantly.

To see what is detected in real time click Show blink screen

Window like this will open

The white rectangle shows the detected face and the green rectangles show the eyes detected.

This feature require your Camera to be enabled.

To hide the Blink screen click Hide blink screen

Smart brightness and Automatic brightness works nice at the moment and I personally use them. I still don’t see much point into the Blink detection and Smart inversion.

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Screen overlay is special blue light reduction and chromotherapy filter. When it’s active you will have transparent overlay over the screen like this

There are several cases which it will be usefull. One of them is when your video card and monitor doesn’t support any color transformation changes and there is no other way to reduce the blue light emitted from the screen.

Second case is if you want only part of the screen to be with modified colors. One other case is also if you are into chromotherapy and color psychology.

By using overlay with different colors you can change your mood as you like.

Screen overlay is also connected to the day and night just like the main Color temperature and Brightness features.

During the day the day values will be used and during the night the night values.

You can Enable the Screen Overlay by clicking the Enable button at the bottom of the page

Then you will see Screen overlay with the selected Overlay color

The buttons at the bottom of the page will also change

You see all different Overlay colors from this video

Opacity

With the Opacity sliders you can control the amount of blue light emitted from the screen. I don’t call it Color temperature slider, because it’s really opacity of the blue light filter, not real color temperature values

It will also decrease the blue light, but I just think that the 2 terms need to be separated. Many blue light reduction applications for Android which use similar approach call it Color temperature which is wrong.

The creators of f.lux say that this approach is ineffective which is also wrong. Placing red transparent overlay will reduce the blue light, but it just can’t be called Color temperature.

The bigger the value of the Opacity slider the more blue light will be removed from the screen.

At 0% there is not filter at all. So thing of this slider as to control the filter opacity percentage. Here is also demonstration video

Dim

Think of Dim like brightness, but again this is not entirelly true, because this is dimming of the overlay. The effect is almost the same, but the screen is a little more ugly this way.

You can control the Screen overlay dimming by moving the Dim sliders. The lower the value the brighter the screen.

It’s important to note that when opacity is 0% dim will not work. Here is also demonstration video

Enable/Disable

Clicking the Enable button will enable the Screen overlay

Clicking the Disable button will disable it

Part Screen overlay

Using Select screen area and Reset selected area you can select area of the screen which will not be effected by the screen overlay

This way you can have part of the screen calibrated. For example when you paint something and want perfect colors. Here is also demonstration video

It’s important to note that Screen overlay is separate from Color temperature and Brightness of Iris which means that Screen overlay will stack over the current Color temperature and Brightness and in order to not see the native changes you need to set Color temperature and Brightness to maximum values.

Use Screen overlay if your PC doesn’t support Iris native changes or if you want part screen color effects.

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Timer pausers are way to pause Iris timer when certain programs are running. This is usefull when you watch movies for example and don’t want the Iris rest screen to appear and interrupt your pleasure time.

To activate Timer pausers click this checkbox to ON

Now just add the name of the programs you want to pause Iris when running. Make sure to click Save and close after this for changes to take effect

You can find the name of the program executable via Task Manager

Then just enter this into Iris Timer pausers text area.

Here is also demonstration video

On Mac it’s basically the same, but use Activity Monitor to find the process name

On Linux use similar task manager.

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Color pausers are way to pause Iris color changes when certain programs are running. This is usefull when you use Photoshop and want to automatically pause Iris when Photoshop is running.

To activate Color pausers click this checkbox to ON

Now just add the name of the programs you want to pause Iris when running. Make sure to click Save and close after this for changes to take effect

You can find the name of the program executable via Task Manager

Then just enter this into Iris Color pausers text area.

Here is also demonstration video

On Mac it’s basically the same, but use Activity Monitor to find the process name

On Linux use similar task manager.

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From here you can customize some general settings about how Iris works.

Autosave settings changes

If this options is checked you will only need to press X to Save all settings otherwise you need to press Save and close

If unchecked the close button will restore the last saved settings which is nice when you want to experiment with new settings, but don’t want to erase all your last settings.

Uncheck this make the changes and if you don’t them just press X.

Block keyboard on strict mode

If you are hackerish enough you can exit the Rest screen even in Strict mode by some combination of keys.

Examples are Windows key or Alt+Tab

Well if this checkbox is checked your entire keyboard will be blocked during the rest. This will only work on Strict mode and the only way to kill the Rest screen will be Restart.

It’s nice for people like me who want to force themself to rest, but I’m warning you to use this with extreme caution.

Use Mouse inactivity for pausing Work timer

When you don’t move your mouse for 2 minutes the Work timer will be automatically paused until you move your mouse again.

If unchecked no such checks will be made.

Use low-level Color API

One of biggest innovations of Iris over everything else is the High-level Color API. What this strange name does is that this will enable you to use Iris on monitors without graphics drivers.

For example unchecking this box with make Iris works with DisplayLink and other docking stations. Iris will also work in Virtual machine althought I’m not sure why you would need this, but the docking station is important.

Many users use monitors connected via USB and by unchecking this box you will make Iris work on them.

Low-level Color API is enabled by default, because it’s faster and it’s best for the most users. The low-level API works really close to the video card while the high-level is close the desktop rendering.

Also some games doesn’t allow Iris to change the colors in Fullscreen and while windowed mode is solution, High-level Color API should work with them also.

Reset settings to default

By clicking this button you will reset all options and customizations to Iris defaults. This is usefull sometimes where you don’t know why something doesn’t work or works strange.

Iris has many options and while I try to make it as user friendly as possible sometimes you can click unwittingly something which makes the program look buggy.

Use this button to Reset settings to Iris defaults.

Reset colors

By default Iris respects your color calibration. I made this for people who work with colors and use proffesional color profiles. The point is that when you pause Iris your monitor will be perfectly calibrated, but imagine that Iris has crashed and the colors remain red.

You start Iris again and even on 100% the screen is still dark or red. Clicking Reset colors will not respect color calibration and will reset colors to monitors default. This button is just in case something goes wrong.

Use this button if at maximum values the screen is still dark or red.

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From this page you can customize how Iris interacts with your system. The goal of this page is to be explanation how every option works 🙂

Hide Takbar icon on close

Windows

When this option is checked Iris will close itseft to the tray when close is clicked. It will still work, but only here

The taskbar is this thing

And when close button is clicked this icon will be hidden. If this option is unchecked this icon will be vissible as long as Iris is running

Mac OSX

On OSX this works a little different as Mac doesn’t have taskbar, but something called dock.

When this option is checked Iris will be visible only in the tray

When this option is checked Iris will be visible both in the tray and in the dock

Use keyboard shortcuts

If checked you can use all Iris shortcuts otherwise they are inactive and doesn’t conflict with your other programs. For full list of the available shortcuts see the Shortcuts article.

 Use software mouse cursor

When this is unchecked the mouse will be blue on Windows like this

When checked the cursor will match the screen

This option is not enabled by default, because some people reported me that when they play games with this feature on the game cursor dissappears which is unacceptable to be by default.

Start Iris on startup

When this thing is checked Iris will start automatically when you turn on your PC. If you don’t want Iris to start automatically uncheck this option.

On Mac OSX move Iris outside of the Downloads folder to start it on startup. When in the Downloads folder Mac apps start in sandbox.

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From here you can customize the Iris timer.

When the timer is active before the rest you will get reminder like this

Then just before the rest you will get Postpone window in the bottom right corner of the screen

Clicking postpone will cause the timer to be postponed by the Postpone duration. You can customize this duration from here

When the timer is running the remaining work and rest time are shown on the main screen

If you don’t postpone the timer rest screen is shown

You can select different timers from the Timer type dropdown.

The available timers are

Off

The timer is stopped and there will be no break reminding.

Normal

Normal mode looks like this

By default every 30 minutes this screen will be shown with countdown timer. You can change work and rest time from the Timer page

Strict

Strict mode doesn’t have this Skip rest button and can’t be skipped. Use it to force yourself to get up, but be careful not to lock your PC for long period of time.

Strict mode looks like this and can’t be skipped

Productive

Productive mode is one nice Pomodoro timer which can easily switched from rest to work. As the name it’s make for people who use work and rest combinations for productivity

You can change the duration of the work and rest time from

This values apply to all timer types. You can also test the rest screen by clicking Have a rest now or using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Alt+Enter

If Auto close rest screen is set to OFF you will get Continue button after the rest has ended

If Use sounds is set to OFF there will be no sounds for break reminding.[:bg]

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By default Iris will detect your location automatically, but if for some reason it detects it wrong you can set Manual location or night duration from here.

Common reason for wrong detection is no internet connection, VPN or strange proxy configurations.

To set your own Location click the Manual location checkbox to ON and Manual night duration to OFF like this

When you set this location Iris will use some complicated math to calculate the sun position and adjust gradually the Color Temperature and Brightness of the screen.

Latitude and Longitude are standard geographic coordinates.

For your city you can find them from site like http://www.latlong.net/ or Google Maps.

From the LatLong site you just enter your city name, click Find and copy the result to Iris like this

So this location thing is useful when you are behind VPN or proxy, but if you want custom night duration you can set Manual night duration to ON and set Manual location to OFF like this

The values for Night start and end time are hour from 0 to 24. So you need to enter a number between 0 and 24 to tell Iris the preferred night duration.

I also plan the add transition duration here and the UI may change a little in the future.

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The idea of this feature is to dinamically magnify the screen which means that you can move your mouse and type characters from your keyboard and the screen will update itself in the meantime.

The most obvious usage is just to see some texts better like this

In YouTube there are some videos which are displayed on only half of the screen. Even on fullscreen the subtitles are small. Example

You can magnify the screen and watch it like this

And other use cases like this.

You have also shortcuts

Ctrl+Alt+Plus(+)

Zoom in the Screen

Ctrl+Alt+Minus(-)

Zoom out the Screen

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From this page you can choose different system wide font rendering. I have wrote a lot about Font rendering, but with a few words, the ugly the font rendering the better for the eyes.

Beautifull font rendering works with font smoothing and blurring which is bad for the eyes. Windows ClearType is better than the OSX default font rendering and Simple fonts are always the best.

On Windows Fonts page looks like this:

And they look like this:

Different font renderings packed with Iris. Click to enlarge.

Here are a little more examples:

GDIPP is Mac like font rendering for Windows. It’s not best for the eyes, but some people like it so whatever 🙂

Same thing on Mac, but with a little different names:

On Mac also you need to Restart your PC to see the changes.

I’m still searching a way to make this on Linux, but I guess it’s no so high priority. Blue light and Brightness has bigger impact on the eye health.

For best eye protection use Simple fonts.

The post Fonts page appeared first on 💡👨‍💻 Iris - Software for Eye protection, Health and Productivity 🛌👀.

With Color Temperature you can lower the blue light, but with Screen effects you can apply more complex color effects to the screen.

For example I frequently use my screen with Inverted colors or I made it Grayscale. Some effects can simulate color blindness while others are just cool.

By clicking Screen effects checkbox you will enable Screen effects.

From the Screen effect dropdown you can select different Screen effects.

The available Screen effects at the moment are

Simple Inversion

Grayscale 1

Grayscale 2

Grayscale 3

Negative Grayscale

Washout 1

Washout 2

Washout 3

Smart Inversion 1

Smart Inversion 2

Smart Inversion 3

Smart Inversion 4

Smart Inversion 5

Sephia

Negative Sephia

Grayscale Red

Negative Grayscale Red

Photanopia

Photanomaly

Deuteranopia

Deuteranomaly

Tritanopia

Tritanomaly

Achromatopsia

Achromatomaly

Some of this effects are available only on Windows, because I’m still searching a way to make them on other OS like Mac OSX and Linux.

The most popular Screen effects are integrated in the free version of Iris as Reading, Sleep and other types.

The post Screen effects page appeared first on 💡👨‍💻 Iris - Software for Eye protection, Health and Productivity 🛌👀.

This was really hard to make and is working currently only on Windows and OSX. It will also work only with the Low-level Color API. The High-level Color API will not work at the moment.

Basically choose on which monitor Iris to work on like this

The post Manage monitors page appeared first on 💡👨‍💻 Iris - Software for Eye protection, Health and Productivity 🛌👀.

From this page you can customize the amount of blue light emitted from your screen.

Basically lower values and less blue light means better sleep and less eye strain.

The Day and Night Temperature sliders may seem to have strange values, but for legacy reasons and for users coming from other software I leave them like this.

This value is K or Kelvins and it’s the default measure for Color Temperature.

Color temperature of 6500 K is no color changes and calibrated display.

Day Temperature is the temperature of the display during the day.

Night Temperature is the temperature of the display during the night.

Iris determines if it’s day or night based on your location or on your system clock. Then it does gradual interpolation between the 2 values when the time is right.

You can change the default location from the Location page.

Extended values will allow you to select values over 6500 K.

Some people use this as some kind of caffeine mode when they don’t want to fall a sleep at night. Values over 6500 K has over the maximum blue light so be careful. This values will not help you fall a sleep faster.

This is how Iris looks at 6500 K (No blue light reduction)

At 0 K (Maximum blue light reduction)

And at 10 000 K (Over the maximum blue light)

I don’t use 10 000K, because my head starts to hurt, but some people use it when they want to put all nighters.

When Manual color settings is set to ON, Night Temperature will be used both during the day and during the night. This way it’s easier to change the temperature fast by hand.

If Keyboard shortcuts are enabled you can use also use

Ctrl+Alt+↑ to increase the Night Temperature and

Ctrl+Alt+↓ to decrease the Night Temperature

This are Up and Down arrow found next to the left to the Enter and right Ctrl key and left to the Num pad. The step is 500 K and the temperature can be set from 0 K to 6500 K. For other values use the sliders.

Reset temperature does something which you may think it’s strange, but it’s useful in some situations. Basically if you killed Iris somehow your screen may be red without Iris running. Reset temperature will fix this, but will also remove your display calibration.

Invert colors will invert the colors like this

The post Color Temperature page appeared first on 💡👨‍💻 Iris - Software for Eye protection, Health and Productivity 🛌👀.

From here you can make some things related to the screen Color Temperature

Reset temperature

If for some reason Iris is killed the screen colors will remain more yellow, orange or red.

To reset this colors to normal screen click the Reset temperature button.

Invert colors

With this button you can invert the screen colors.

This is useful when you want to read really white page with black letter. You can invert the colors and read black page with white letters.

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When this checkbox is set to ON only the Night Brightness slider will work.

The Day Brightness slider will not work.

What this checkbox basically does it to use only the Night Brightness all the time day and night.

It’s useful when you want to control Iris by hand all the time.

The post Manual brightness Help appeared first on 💡👨‍💻 Iris - Software for Eye protection, Health and Productivity 🛌👀.

When this checkbox is set to ON only the Night Temperature slider will work.

The Day Temperature slider will not work.

What this checkbox basically does it to use only the Night Temperature all the time day and night.

It’s useful when you want to control Iris by hand all the time.

The post Manual color settings Help appeared first on 💡👨‍💻 Iris - Software for Eye protection, Health and Productivity 🛌👀.

You can do 2 things with the footer.

Save and close

Save and close saves the current settings and sends Iris to the tray.

Use Advanced Settings

If this checkbox is clicked Advanced view will be shown.

From here you can customize everything in Iris, but you need Iris Pro to enter some pages and customize some settings.

Since I don’t want to place ads or to sell user data some features of Iris are paid, but I try to make everybody happy. For most people the modes and types in the Simple view are completely fine.

If you want to access the locked sections in the Advanced view you can buy Iris Pro activation code from the Buy page.

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By default Iris will try to automatically find your location. This thing is done only once and location services are not used. Basically you will not get battery drain or more CPU usage.

The Location is used to automatically gradually adjust Iris. Based on your latitude and longitude sunset and sunrise are calculated and with the help of the current time there is gradual interpolation of Color temperature and Brightness.

One thing I want to note is that this info is not send to the Server and nobody is seeing your location. It’s just shown for your convenience.

Actually everything in Iris is anonymous. Even the activation codes are not connected to names or e-mail. Everything in Iris is local, secure and anonymous so don’t worry about your privacy.

If you are under VPN or the location is not detected correctly you can set it to manual via the Location page.

The post Automatic Location appeared first on 💡👨‍💻 Iris - Software for Eye protection, Health and Productivity 🛌👀.

Iris has feature which reminds you to take a breaks from time to time. Here you can set the duration of the work in this case 30 min and the duration of the rest, in this case 5 min.

You can force the rest with the Have a rest now button or with the shortcut Ctrl+Alt+Enter

There are several places which show the remaining work. One is the tray icon, the other is the upper right corner of Iris. You will also get notification for incomming break and postpone window 10 sec before the break.

You can read for about the break reminding from the dedicated article.

When I was working in office I used intervals of 30/5 minutes and this is the Iris default, but this days I generally don’t need to take breaks, because my eyes feels good thanks to the many other good features for eye health.

You can stop the work timer from the tray menu if you want.

The post Break every appeared first on 💡👨‍💻 Iris - Software for Eye protection, Health and Productivity 🛌👀.

As I explain in the Brightness article most monitors use method for controlling the brightness called Pulse Width Modulation which is really bad for the eyes. Iris uses it’s own special innovative brightness which reduces your brightness without introducing flicker to your monitor.

Note that under Windows there is limitation of this color changes by default and Iris will prompth you to Expand your color range on the initial calibration.

With the new versions of Iris this expanding is automatic and you just need to restart your computer once after the first Iris installation.

If some of the values on this dropdown are unavailable chanses are you need to Expand your system color range.

By default also Iris will apply the brightness manually, but you can make the brightness to low gradually at night by setting Manual brightness to OFF.

After every change remember to click Save and close otherwise all changes will be reverted to the last saved state.

If you wonder what value should you use from your brightness, the rule is that it should match your room lighting. For example at night I use it on 75% when the lighting is ON and on 45% when the lighting is OFF.

Iris also has the option to use AI and your camera to automatically adjust your screen brightness based on the lighting, but this is options is disabled by default as some users find it creepy if their camera is working.

I am working also on using the integrated light sensor on some laptops, but this feature is still not ready.

The post Brightness dropdown appeared first on 💡👨‍💻 Iris - Software for Eye protection, Health and Productivity 🛌👀.

The Night color dropdown is about better sleep. The lower the value of the Night color the less blue light is emitted by the screen.

Blue light is bad for your sleep, because it stops the secretion of melatonin, our sleep hormone. I set my night color to 2700K at night, but the rule is the lower the better.

Note that under Windows there is limitation of this color changes by default and Iris will prompth you to Expand your color range on the initial calibration.

With the new versions of Iris this expanding is automatic and you just need to restart your computer once after the first Iris installation.

If some of the values on this dropdown are unavailable chanses are you need to Expand your system color range.

By default also Iris will apply this color changes only at night and will use your location to find the sunset time. If you want to manually control the Color temperature set Manual color settings to ON.

Iris also finds your location automatically, but you can also set it manually from the Location page.
From there you can select manual location or manual night duration.

After every change remember to click Save and close otherwise all changes will be reverted to the last saved state.

So for good night sleep set this settings to low value. The lower the better.

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