Night, Google

Transforming Google.com to be one easier for your eyes 🌙

Comment

Inspiration

After being transitioned to an online learning setup, it was also inevitable for many students and other internet users to increase their gadget usage and usage of Google.com as the leading search engine for all their curious minds ending late at night (or should I say morning). With the increase in usage, there is also an increase in the need to decrease the Blue light emitted by our gadgets.

Blue light can penetrate the lens directly to our retina, causing the atrophy or even death of retinal pigment epithelial cells. The death of light-sensitive cells will result in decreased vision or even complete permanent loss of vision. This damage is irreversible.

Due to the short wavelength of blue light, the eyeballs will be in a state of tension for a long time, causing visual fatigue. You may experience symptoms such as eye fatigue, headache, blurred vision, dry eyes, neck and shoulder pain.

Excessive exposure to blue light at night and insufficient melatonin secretion in the human body will keep people awake and unable to fall asleep, which causes the problem of insomnia.

Therefore, if we want to reduce the total amount of blue light emitted by the screen, one way is to reduce the blue light component in the spectrum, that is, lower the color temperature and adjust the screen to a yellowish tint.

Yellow screens are better for the eyes. The yellow screen can effectively reduce the blue light emitted by the screen, relieve eye fatigue, and even help you fall asleep better at night.

Thus, the creation of Night, Google 🌕 , a Google Chrome extension that helps you have a better user experience in browsing through Google by changing the page background color to a more eye-friendly tint of yellow.

What is Blue light and why is it bad?

Blue light is light with relatively high energy with a wavelength between 400nm and 480nm. It has a shorter wavelength and is part of the visible spectrum.

Blue light can penetrate the lens directly to our retina, causing the atrophy or even death of retinal pigment epithelial cells. The death of light-sensitive cells will result in decreased vision or even complete loss of vision. This damage is irreversible.

Blue light can also cause age-related macular degeneration, which can lead to permanent vision loss.

The lens of the human eye will absorb part of the blue light and gradually become cloudy to form cataracts, and most of the blue light will penetrate the lens, especially children’s lenses are clearer and cannot effectively resist the blue light, which is more likely to cause macular degeneration and cataracts.

Due to the short wavelength of blue light, the eyeballs will be in a state of tension for a long time, causing visual fatigue. You may experience symptoms such as eye fatigue, headache, blurred vision, dry eyes, neck and shoulder pain.

Excessive exposure to blue light at night and insufficient melatonin secretion in the human body will keep people awake and unable to fall asleep, which causes the problem of insomnia.

What it does

Night, Google 🌕 is a Chrome Extension that aims to help users have a more eye-friendly experience while searching on Google.com by changing the default bright white background color to a more relaxed yellowish tint.

How I built it

To build the extension, I used HTML, CSS, and Javascript.

Challenges I ran into

  • Debugging the code when it was being put on the Chrome store developer mode
  • Finding the best color to use for the new background color on Google

Accomplishments that I am proud of

I am beyond glad that I was able to create my first ever Chrome extension and have it solve a problem I too am facing now. It was also the first time I created a project completely on my own, finished only in a few hours.

What I learned

I learned how to create a Chrome Extension from scratch!

What's next for Night, Google

I am looking forward to making the background even more comprehensive on Google.com, and creating more variations of colors to choose from. I also plan on creating a preview on Chrome so when users click on the extension icon, they can choose which color they prefer for the background of the page. I also plan on creating official icons for the extension so I could launch it in the future in the Chrome web store.

Built With

Share this project:

Updates