Google today unveiled a new feature in the Play Books app called “Night Light” which will filter blue light from your phone or tablet’s display and replace it with comfortable amber tones designed to make nighttime reading safer, as staring at a bright white screen before going to sleep is dangerous for your eyes. Google says it has noticed that reading activity peaks between 8PM and 10PM local time, meaning that a lot of people are reading right before they go to bed.
Today we’re introducing Night Light, a new feature that makes night time reading more enjoyable and easier on the eyes. When turned on, Night Light gradually filters blue light from your screen, replacing it with a warm, amber light as the sun sets. Night Light automatically adapts to the amount of natural sunlight outside based on the time of day, giving you just the right temperature and brightness. The color adjustment is more comfortable on your eyes and greatly improves low-light night reading.
However this is a great feature Google added to make reading more pleasurable, we actually already have this feature – called Blue Shade – on the Kindle Fire HD 8 Reader’s Edition and Fire OS 5.1.1 found on Amazon’s line of Fire tablets. This brings up the question of whether Google wants to attract Kindle users and bring them over to their platform or it’s just a cheap knockoff of what Amazon offers. I’m not here to point fingers or anything, but I just find it a coincidence that as soon as Amazon comes out with something for nighttime reading, Google immediately jumps out of their chair and comes out with their own version of it. I dunno, that’s just me…
You can download the update for Google Play Books on the Play Store and App Store for free right now.
