Sundown

What it does

Sundown is a small app that lives in the Mac menu bar and changes the colour and brightness of the display in the evening. The usual screen white sits around 6500 K. Sundown can take it down in 100 K steps to 500 K, which is a deep red, and it brings the brightness down at the same time so the screen is not a bright amber box in a dark room.

Most people set a schedule and stop thinking about it. You pick when the evening starts and when you want the screen at its warmest, and the display drifts there on its own. If you would rather do it by hand, the panel has a warmth slider, a brightness slider and a row of presets you can switch between with one click.

Details

• Warmth from 6500 K down to 500 K in 100 K steps
• Brightness dimming alongside the warmth
• An evening schedule, or manual control from the menu bar
• One-click presets
• macOS 14 Sonoma or later, on Apple Silicon and Intel Macs

There is a 7-day free trial. After that it is $4.99 a month, $39 a year, or $79 once for a lifetime licence. Sundown is made by Jack Richards.

Further reading

If you want the reasoning behind the app, The science behind Sundown walks through it. There is also a free Blue Light Calculator you can use without installing anything, and Screen flicker and eye strain research collects the studies on that subject and says plainly where the evidence is thin.