Best Blue Light Filter App for Mac and MacBook in 2026

The best blue light filter app for a Mac or MacBook in 2026 depends on how warm you want the screen, whether flicker bothers you and which computers you use, and this page ranks the apps on those three things, in that order. By the warmest setting each developer publishes, Iris comes first, listing the warmest settings of all, then Sundown at a deep red, f.lux at a deep orange, CircadianShield a little short of f.lux's warmest and Solace a little short of CircadianShield, with Night Shift last because Apple publishes no figure for it. We make Sundown, and it is the one on this list tested by Dr. Alexander Wunsch: at its deep warmth settings it eliminates blue light, and its flicker-free mode removes screen flicker. If a mild evening tint is all you want, Night Shift is free and already on your Mac.

Start your 7-day free trial, or read how we tested Sundown first.

Because we make Sundown, we ranked the list by a rule you can check rather than by our opinion. The apps are in order of the warmest setting each developer publishes, because how warm you want the screen is the first of the three things that decide it. Where two publish the same figure, flicker decides: an app whose flicker-free dimming has been tested comes before one where the developer describes it, which comes before one that says nothing. An app with no published figure goes last. Facts about the other apps come from each developer's own site or Apple's support pages, listed at the bottom, and prices were read on 11 October 2026.

Blue light filter apps for Mac, ranked

A warmer setting means a redder screen. "Flicker-free" means the app offers a way to dim without leaning on the backlight's flicker: for Sundown we tested it, for the others it is whatever the developer says. Lunar comes up in the same searches, but it is a brightness app with no blue light filter, so it has its own section below. To see what each setting looks like on your display, try the Blue Light Calculator.

Iris: the warmest listed setting, on three platforms

Iris runs on Windows, Mac and Linux, with a free version and paid upgrades. Iris Pro is $14.99 once, Iris mini Pro is $9.99, or there is a $1.99 monthly subscription. Its help pages list settings from ordinary daytime white down to the warmest of any app here, and its site says it controls brightness without PWM. It offers extensive customization, which suits people who like to tune things and puts off people who don't. Iris doesn't publish a macOS build date, so we can't tell you how recent its Mac version is. We compare the two in more depth in Sundown vs Iris on the Mac.

Sundown: down to a deep red, and tested

Sundown is a menu bar app for people who want the screen warmer and dimmer at night than Night Shift allows. Its warmth ladder runs from ordinary daytime white down to a deep red, in small steps, with seven warmth presets plus a custom setting, and at its deepest setting and full intensity the gamma table passes red only, so the screen turns a deep red. You can also set a custom schedule by time of day, so it comes on in the evening without you thinking about it.

What it adds is a measurement. Dr. Alexander Wunsch measured the light from a Mac screen across the whole blue band, 380 to 500 nm, with Sundown off and at deep warmth, and at deep warmth Sundown eliminates blue light. The second test was flicker. Sundown's flicker-free mode holds the built-in display's backlight at full power and does the dimming in software, and on an oscilloscope that mode removes screen flicker. Both tests are written up in how we tested Sundown.

On Apple silicon it can also switch off the temporal dithering that some people see as a faint shimmer at deep settings, which is covered in display dithering on Mac. It runs on macOS 12 or later, and Windows is coming soon. It costs $4.99 a month, $39 a year or $79 once for a lifetime licence, and the monthly and annual plans start with a 7-day free trial, so you get a week of evenings with it before you decide.

Try Sundown free for 7 days.

f.lux: the free download most people try first

f.lux still ships: its Windows build is dated 8 April 2026. The Mac build hasn't changed since 17 May 2023. It is free on the Mac, it asks where you live and warms the screen around your local sunset, and its FAQ lists presets from Sunlight down to Ember, a deep orange. It also has a Darkroom mode that turns the screen red and black. Our guide to installing f.lux on a Mac and what to do if it won't launch walks through setup.

People usually look past f.lux when they want something warmer than its deep orange or dimming that doesn't lean on the backlight. Sundown vs f.lux compares the two setting by setting, Night Shift vs f.lux compares the two free options, and our f.lux alternatives guide covers the wider field, including Windows.

CircadianShield: one price for Mac and Windows

CircadianShield sells one-time licences, $27 for Core and $47 for Pro, with a 30-day money-back guarantee, and a licence covers up to two computers on Mac or Windows. It warms from ordinary daytime white down to a little short of f.lux's warmest, follows the sun where you are, and does its dimming with a software overlay so the hardware brightness can stay higher. It also has per-app profiles, a break timer and a light-exposure dashboard. If you split your time between a Mac and a Windows PC, it is a reasonable pick as long as its warmest setting is warm enough for you. Sundown for Windows is coming soon.

Solace: warmth plus automatic dark mode

Solace is a Mac app that does two jobs. It switches macOS between light and dark mode by your local sunrise and sunset, with a weather-aware option that turns dark mode on during overcast days, and its Evening Warmth feature eases the screen from ordinary daytime white down to a little short of CircadianShield's warmest. It also changes your wallpaper through the day. It needs macOS 13 Ventura or later and costs $9.99 once, with a 14-day trial that doesn't ask for a card. Its site doesn't describe any dimming or flicker setting, so if the warm end of the evening is what you care about, its floor stops a little short of CircadianShield's.

Night Shift: free and already on your Mac

Night Shift is in System Settings under Displays. Apple says it needs macOS Sierra 10.12.4 or later and a Mac from 2012 or later, so it is on every MacBook Air and MacBook Pro anyone is likely to be using. It can run from sunset until sunrise or on custom hours, and a slider makes it more or less warm. Apple's own description is that warmer settings show more yellow and less blue, and Apple doesn't publish a figure for the warm end of that slider.

If you want a gentle evening tint and nothing to install, Night Shift does that job and costs nothing. What it doesn't have is a setting as deep as a red screen, dimming beyond your normal brightness, or a way to deal with flicker. Sundown vs Night Shift puts the two side by side, and our Night Shift alternative guide goes into where it stops.

Lunar: a brightness app, not a blue light filter

Lunar shows up in a lot of Mac display searches, but it does a different job from the rest of this list. It controls the brightness of external monitors and the built-in screen, and its Sub-zero Dimming takes the brightness below the screen's own minimum. On MacBook Pros with an XDR display it can also lift the brightness limit macOS sets. It is free, with a $23 lifetime Pro licence, and needs macOS 11 or later. It has no color temperature control, and its FAQ notes that Night Shift works alongside it without conflict. If darkness matters more to you than warmth, our list of screen dimmer apps for Mac compares Lunar with the other dimmers.

Which blue light filter app is best for a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro?

On a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro the same ranking holds, and the choice still comes down to how warm you want the screen. If you want it deep red at night with tested flicker-free dimming on the built-in display, that is Sundown. If you want the most settings to tune, Iris. If a mild evening tint is all you want, Night Shift is enough.

On most MacBooks the question is less about compatibility than about how you use the laptop. A laptop tends to be the screen that comes out late, on a sofa or in bed, and that is when a deeper setting and steady dimming make the most difference.

For a MacBook Air, Sundown runs on macOS 12 or later on both Apple silicon and Intel, so an older Air is covered too. Its flicker-free mode works on the built-in display's backlight, which is the screen you look at most on a laptop.

A MacBook Pro gets the same advice, with one more app in the picture: if your Pro has an XDR display and you also want it brighter during the day, Lunar can lift the brightness limit, which none of the filter apps do. For the Pro specifically, our guide to reducing blue light on MacBook Pro walks through every option from Night Shift down to a deep red.

On MacBook Pros with the M5 Pro or M5 Max chip, a macOS bug that Apple has reproduced on its developer forum stops apps that warm the screen through a color table, f.lux among them, from changing the built-in display (the thread is linked in the sources at the bottom). Our f.lux alternatives guide explains the bug and what other developers have done about it.

What people mean by a "night mode app" for MacBook

macOS has two settings that both get called night mode, and they do different things. Dark Mode changes windows and menus to dark colors, while Night Shift and filter apps change the color of the light the whole screen gives off. You can use both at once. If you've already turned on Night Shift and the screen still looks too bright and blue at midnight, our guide to making night mode darker on a Mac goes through the settings to change first and where an app takes over.

How to set up a blue light app on a MacBook

1. Start the Sundown free trial, open the download and drag it into Applications.
2. Turn Night Shift off in System Settings, Displays, because two apps changing the display color at once give unpredictable results. Quit any other filter app too.
3. Open Sundown from the menu bar and pick a preset. Start with a mild preset, then try deeper ones over the next few evenings.
4. Set a schedule so it warms through the evening on its own, and turn on flicker-free mode if you dim the screen a lot at night.

How to choose

Every blue light filter app on this list warms the screen after dark, so the decision comes down to how warm you want it, whether flicker bothers you, and which computers you use.

• The warmest listed setting and the most settings to tune: Iris, which lists the warmest settings of any app here.
• A deep red screen, tested, with flicker-free dimming: Sundown, down to a deep red. Start the 7-day free trial.
• A free download: f.lux, down to a deep orange.
• One app across Mac and Windows: CircadianShield or Iris (Sundown for Windows is coming soon).
• Warmth and automatic dark mode in one cheap app: Solace.
• Free, with nothing to install: Night Shift.
• Darker, not warmer: Lunar, or another app from our screen dimmer list.

For the bigger picture, our complete Mac blue light filter guide covers the settings and the apps together, how to filter blue light on a MacBook beyond Night Shift walks through the laptop settings, and the Mac display health app roundup adds the apps that handle flicker and eye strain.

FAQ

What is the best blue light filter app for MacBook Air?
It depends on how warm you want the screen. Iris lists the warmest setting. Sundown, which we make, goes down to a deep red with tested flicker-free dimming, and runs on macOS 12 or later. Night Shift is fine if you only want a mild tint, because it is free and already there.

Is there a free blue light app for Mac?
Yes. Night Shift is built into macOS, and f.lux is a free download whose warmest preset is Ember, a deep orange. Iris and Lunar have free tiers too, though Lunar is a brightness app and doesn't filter blue light. Sundown has a 7-day free trial on its monthly and annual plans.

Does Night Shift filter blue light?
It shifts the screen toward warmer colors, and Apple describes warmer settings as showing more yellow and less blue. Apple doesn't publish how warm its warmest setting is, and it has no red setting, which is why people who want more go to a third-party app.

Is f.lux still worth using in 2026?
It still works and it is still free, and the company behind it is active. The Mac version is the 2023 build described above, and its warmest preset is Ember, a deep orange, so if you want deeper than that or flicker-free dimming, Sundown is the step up.

Can I use Sundown and Night Shift together?
There is no reason to, and it is better not to. Two apps changing the display color at once give unpredictable results, and Sundown's ladder already covers everything from a mild daytime warmth down to a deep red, so turn Night Shift off while you use it.

Has Sundown been independently tested?
Yes. Dr. Alexander Wunsch tested its effect on the blue band of a Mac screen, and we checked the flicker-free mode ourselves on an oscilloscope. Both are described on how we tested Sundown.

Notes on the research

The reason evening screen color matters at all comes from circadian research. The light-sensitive ganglion cells in the retina that carry most of light's effect on the body clock are intrinsically blue-sensitive (Gooley et al., 2010), the most potent wavelengths for suppressing melatonin at night sit between 446 and 477 nm (Brainard et al., 2001), and the suppression curve peaks near 459 nm (Thapan et al., 2001). A trial in PNAS found that reading on a light-emitting eReader before bed, compared with a printed book, delayed the timing of the circadian clock and suppressed evening melatonin (Chang et al., 2015), and melatonin suppression follows a dose-response curve, so smaller changes in evening light count too (Zeitzer et al., 2000). Harvard Health's summary, Blue light has a dark side, is a readable overview of the same work.

A warmth setting on its own is only a setting, and it describes the color the software asks for. That is why the competitor floors in the table are each vendor's own published setting, and why the measurement behind Sundown's claim is described on its own page. Screens are also only one source of evening light: a 2026 study in Scientific Reports (Terán et al., 2026) estimated that cool white home lamps induce considerably more melatonin suppression than warm white or incandescent ones. In the National Sleep Foundation's 2022 poll, more than half of adults reported often looking at screens within an hour before bedtime or in bed before sleep during the previous week.

On the limits: a 2023 Cochrane review found that blue-light filtering glasses may not ease eye strain from computer use and that their effect on sleep was indeterminate (Singh et al., 2023). That review is about glasses, not screen software, and it is collected with the other studies and their limits on our science page. We read the flicker studies the same way in Screen Flicker and Digital Eye Strain: The Evidence, and if you use an external monitor, PWM monitor flicker shows how to check yours. For eye strain more broadly, see how to reduce eye strain on Mac, and for what the numbers mean, color temperature explained.

Sources for the other apps

These are the developer and Apple pages behind the facts above, read on 11 October 2026: Apple's Night Shift support page, the f.lux FAQ, Iris's color temperature help page, product page (brightness without PWM) and pricing page, the Solace product page, the CircadianShield site (prices, warmest setting, overlay dimming), the Lunar FAQ, the Apple developer forum thread on the M5 Pro and M5 Max color table bug, and BetterDisplay's color table FAQ.

Start your 7-day Sundown trial and see its deep red on your own screen tonight.

Further reading

• Sundown vs Night Shift: how warm each one goes, scheduling, and price, side by side.
• Sundown vs f.lux: the warmest setting, flicker and price compared.
• Sundown vs Iris on the Mac: what we could check about Iris and how the two compare.
• Screen flicker and digital eye strain: what the studies on flicker do and don't show.