Keeping your eyes healthy is important. Over time we lose vision quality–sometimes so gradually we do so without noticing. There is good news, however. By downloading a few free apps for your phone, you can protect your eyes, stay informed, and train your vision (possibly improving it).

Twilight for Android

As we’ve covered in the past, blue light can cause numerous eye health issues, including digital eye strain and sleep deprivation. It has been proven that spending a couple of hours on your phone before bed can delay sleep for up to an hour. Twilight for Android is here to help. Twilight offers dimming beyond your phone’s natural capability in addition to its primary function, which is identifying the time of day and filtering out your phone’s natural blue light in accordance.

Nightshift Mode for iPhone

Similar to Twilight, this function allows you to manually adjust the warmth on your device by dimming the blue light and using a red/yellow filter. To access this feature, go to your settings, then tap on Display & Brightness. Nightshift can be found under these settings and offers a draggable bar to adjust the filter.

EyeHandbook for iPhone & Android

EyeHandbook is an amazing source of Ophthalmological data. Built as a resource for both doctors and patients, the app can be used to identify when your vision may be a problem, when you should see a doctor and can help doctors access information to show patients.

Magnifier & Flashlight for Android

A simple app meant to help those suffering from vision loss. Magnifier & Flashlight make use of your camera and flash to magnify whatever object or text is desired. The flash stays on for as long as necessary providing you the ability to get into a dark corner to read something.

Be My Eyes for iPhone

This app brings a bit of good news to our cluttered world. Be My Eyes brings the visually impaired in contact with those who are not, for the simple reason of needing help. With users on both sides of visual impairment, those who have trouble seeing or reading can simply post a picture of the item they have issues with and get a response from users who have signed up to help them.

Making use of user’s good will, this app is perfect for anyone who wants to do something rewarding, just as much as it is for someone living with visual impairment. We suggest downloading Be My Eyes, if you use an iPhone, regardless of your visual acuity.

iTint for iPhone

iTint is built to calculate Visible Light Transmission (VLT) through transparent objects. This is useful for a number of reasons, including calculating vehicle tint (for legalities), inspecting camera filters, but most importantly, it can be used when purchasing sunglasses to determine just how well they work. Sunglasses are an important part of maintaining healthy eyesight as UV light can be very harmful on a person’s eyes.

Optical Illusions for Android

This app has less to do with eye health and more to do with fun! Optical Illusions contains 98 different illusions for you to play with. While it may just seem like a fun thing to do when you have a free moment, optical games may also be very good for keeping your eyes healthy.

Eye Exercises – Eye Care Plus

A self-described eye workout you can do on the couch, Eye Exercises contains 50+ exercises, 7 training plans, 12 tests to track vision improvement, 8 quizzes to check your knowledge on eye health, and adaptive difficulty progression to keep things challenging.