Eye Strain Relief Notes

Our digital age has greatly increased use of computer screens, smartphones and television. This has a major effect on eye health and eye fatigue. Even worse, as we age, our eyes are less able to tolerate the blindingly bright or stark black screens often displayed on our internet devices.

The 20-20-20 rule helps to reduce eye strain. Try CTRL-mouse-scrollwheel to adjust text size. More tips: (1) (2) (3).

For web browsing, try dark/night mode and reader mode browser extensions.

Although not recommended for bright office environments, dark mode is helpful when computer use is in low light conditions. Other reader mode browser extensions work well for both low light and bright environments.

There are dozens of dark and reader mode extensions. We found two 5-star choices that we recommend.

Dark Reader extension for Chrome, Firefox and iOS is global. For ALL web sites, it intelligently adjusts text and background colors automatically.

Click the Dark Reader icon (right side of URL bar) and then Site List tab to add exceptions for web domains, domain folders or web pages.

Reader View (yokris) is not automatic but it does much more. Reader View is available for Chrome-based browsers only. To transform a web page, click the icon on the URL bar. Click the global settings sidebar AA tab to adjust text size/width and background color.

Brave windows/android + Kiwi browsers

Over the years, we flipped back and forth between Chrome and Firefox.

Now Brave is our go-to web browser for both Windows and Android.

Android Chrome and Chrome-based Brave lack Chrome extensions. Firefox on Android has extensions including Dark Reader but not as many and not the recommended Yokris Reader View.

The Android Kiwi browser supports Chrome extensions including Reader View. Kiwi is a good Chrome/WebView browser - faster on some sites, slower on others. We still like Brave better but having Chrome extensions in Android is a major plus for the Kiwi browser.

The Dark Reader extension has 3 basic modes (1) Dark (2) Light and (3) Off. Until changed, the mode setting applies to all web sites except those added to the Site List not invert group.

Reader View (yokris) extension works in Chrome-based Windows browsers. In Android, this Chrome extension only works with the Kiwi web browser.

Unlike Dark Reader, the Reader View extension is optimized for reading text. It does not change all web pages.

To transform a web page, click the icon on the URL bar. If wanted, click the global settings sidebar AA tab to adjust background color and text size/width.