Just got the latest cumulative updates, etc. My head and eyes (just as I expected) are noticing it. Once again I'll have to adjust while my eye sight deteriorates. Sigh. 
Windows Updates again!!
wesfowler Maybe if you try to avoid reading text on white backgrounds it will be much easier on the eyes, you can use a custom windows theme, I'm using brown for the background and light gray for the text, it's not pretty and takes a little getting used to but I find it much better for my eyes than using a white backgrounds.
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Why not use black letters on a coloured background like silver instead?
JTL It is similar to using a dark theme vs a light one, many people feel more comfortable watching dark themes in their apps, also they use programs like Twilight to lower the intensity of the brightness and making the colors warmer, not using a white background helps a lot with eye fatigue. The theme that I use is an intermediate one, because the strong contrast of the dark themes with black backgrounds and white letters bothers me too, I also use the named "high contrast" windows theme with which you can change the white background color and it bothers me a lot less than the one is enabled in windows by default.
I was and still am very sensitive to the light that regular monitors emit. I usually have to turn the brightness all the way down. Then the monitors are so dark that I can only see what's going on at the screen by sitting in a dark room with lowered blinds - and yet they still feel too bright and cause pain. The monitor (a TV) I'm currently using is vastly different. Its minimum brightness is so high that I can see the content during daylight with windows open. It feels like a reasonable office brightness, so it's probably around 100 cd/m² or more. But it's usable without pain. The device seems to at least partially use Quantum Dots. If I had to try a new monitor, I'd go for Quantum Dots. However, I believe the backlight itself still matters. The first Quantum Dot models all used a violet backlight. My TV emits a violet light, too, that can be seen through gaps at the sides of the casing. IIRC I have read that nowadays manufacturers can switch to regular blue light backlight when they make a Quantum Dot monitor, so that's probably not good.
These are just indicators, but still: Quantum Dot technology + violet backlight seems promising.
Of course, apart from the backlight everything else in the setup must be usable, too (the monitor's pixel output, backlight flicker, operating system, GPU driver etc.). But this light sensitivity feels very different from pixel eye strain and PWM symptoms. I think it's 3 different kinds of eye strain.
Sunspark Yes, the eye has to work harder in low light situations, but generally it is where there is little contrast or no contrast to help the eyes focus, in a dark windows theme you have white letters and images as a contrast medium so it is not difficult to focus, and the eyes do not get as tired, with the advantage of removing the white background which is a lot of energy radiated towards the eyes, of course I agree that for the dark theme to be comfortable there must be a appropriate light in the environment, because it could be more difficult to see a dark theme than a light one if the light in the environment is very strong.
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KM For me, the only way to be able to use several devices comfortably is in dark mode, when I use a white backgrounds after a while I notice my eyes are very tired and irritated, I think that if there were 3 types of eye strain, anyway our entire optical system being interconnected, it is affected by the different types of eye strain at the same time, I mean, it is not that pwm only affects the brain and the ciliary nerve, dithering only affects the iris muscles and the extraocular muscles, and a lot of blue or white light only affects the optic nerve and the brain and the iris muscles, while the other parts of the optical system and the brain ramain unaffected, all are interconnected, even the neck, the back muscles and other body parts may be affected too, so imho if we try to remove any of the 3 eye strains from the equation this can help, for example if a monitor has a very strong white or blue light, it also has a lot of dithering and pixel inversion and also flickers with a slow pwm, if we remove any parts of the monitor that hurt or we buy a monitor that does not radiate white or blue light as intense, or not has dithering or not has pwm, this may help by controlling the symptoms of eye strain a little better, thats why I use dark themes but everyone is different, as you know what works for some may not work for everyone.
11 days later
Abeabe I have the same symptoms. Did you manage to change white background color in MS office or pdf ?
Have been trying to change default windows white color to grey with no success.
Ended up using Night shift extension for browser to replace white to light grey and Vcollege accessibility program to create grey colored film on top of the screen. Felt significant relief from eye strain using Word, Excel, pdf in Windows. (All Apple and Samsung devices after 2015 are unusable even the ones with 0 PMW) .
One more observation: After gym workout or treadmill training, I felt significant reduction of eye strain, so there is something to do with blood circulation in my case.
krr55 You can change the white background in windows 10 if you select the high contrast theme, I think you can't change the background color if you use normal themes, to view pdfs I use microsoft edge because it will change the background color of the pdf depending of the theme you are using in windows, the same will happend with MS Office, the background should change depending on the windows theme you are using, there is sometimes that I can't change the white background of a application or a client is showing me something in his computer over a zoom conference and I have to activate the magnifier tool in windows with a shortcut, you can configure it to invert the colors of the entire screen and leve the zoom level at 100% so it will only affect the colors in the screen making the background black and the letters white, in the next link I will leave you the windows theme I use, you can change it to your needs, save it to the desktop and just double click it to enable it. https://easyupload.io/t0qord
5 days later
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Stop using OS's that auto update. You are just setting yourself up for problems.
You can install and run Windows 7 just fine, it you have software that requires Windows 10 you can look at stripped down versions of Win 10 like Ghost specter or Tiny10 which do not update.
Using stock Win 10, for us, is like being 9 feet tall in a house with 8 foot doorways. You're going to keep hitting your head no matter how careful you are.
ensete It's very easy to stop windows 10 pro autoupdates, only disable windows update service and set it's recovery to not restart if fails and then enabling group policy in "Computer configuration - Administrative Templates - Windows components - Windows update - Configure automatic updates", you must enable this and set it to "Notify for download and auto install" and configuring some random hour for the notification, if done correctly windows sometimes will pop a little sign telling you that there are some update available to download, I just need to close this sign and ignore this sign forever and windows don't autoupdate.
3 months later
ensete Hi, I am new here (I am from Slovakia). Please can you specify which verions of Tiny10 and Tiny11 you have personally tried? In other post you mentioned they are about 50% better than stock Win 10/ Win 11, so does it apply to all of them or only specific Tiny 10 and Tiny 11 versions are ok for you? I guess latest tiny10 23h1 and tiny10 23h2 which support OS updates I should avoid, right?
I have made a list of x64 versions of Tiny10 and Tiny11 versions which are available for download:
tiny10 23h1 x64.iso (supports OS updates) = 21H2 Build 19044.3031 Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC
tiny10 x64 23h2.iso (supports OS updates) = 21H2 Build 19044.3324 Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC
tiny10 x64 beta 2.iso = 21H2 Build 19044.1889 Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC
tiny10_21H2_x64_beta_1.iso = 21H2 Build 19044.1586 Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC
tiny10 21H2 x64 2209.iso = 21H2 Build 19044.1889 Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC
tiny11 2311 x64.iso
tiny11 23H2 x64.iso
tiny11 b1.iso
tiny11 b2.iso
tiny11 b2(no sysreq).iso
tiny11a64 r1.iso
Windows 11 ..... March 2023 ..... Tiny11.iso
Thank you