Make Text Seem Further Away

Implement a myopic defocus effect on any website

Make Text Seem Further Away — Simulated myopic defocus for any website WHAT IT DOES Every hour you spend reading a screen, your eyes stay locked at one fixed, close distance. Make Text Seem Further Away is a lightweight browser extension built around an idea borrowed from visual optics: the light arriving at your retina from a nearby screen carries a different chromatic signature than light arriving from something far away. This extension reshapes that signature, applying a physically derived colour-channel blur so that the page in front of you carries some of the optical character of a more distant image. It is not a screen dimmer, a blue-light filter, or a magnifier. It is a per-channel optical simulation, computed from your monitor's real physical dimensions and how far your eyes actually sit from it. THE OPTICS BEHIND IT The human eye is not perfectly corrected for colour. Its refractive power varies with wavelength — an effect called longitudinal chromatic aberration, or LCA. Red light focuses slightly behind the retinal plane, blue light slightly in front, and green sits between them. Any image reaching your eye therefore carries a wavelength-dependent blur gradient, and that gradient shifts predictably with viewing distance. It is one of the cues the visual system can use to judge whether an object is near or far, and in which direction the eye is defocused. This extension computes the LCA profile corresponding to roughly 0.23 dioptres of myopic defocus and renders it onto the page. The red channel is left sharp as the reference. The green and blue channels each receive their own Gaussian blur, with radii derived from your screen's true pixel pitch, your viewing distance, and an assumed pupil diameter. The three channels are recombined and blended back over the original page at whatever strength you choose. The maths runs entirely in your browser using standard SVG filter primitives, applied through a single transparent overlay that never intercepts clicks, scrolling, or text selection. SETTING IT UP Accuracy matters here, because the blur radii are computed in real millimetres and then converted to pixels. Four settings drive everything, all in the toolbar popup: Screen diagonal (inches) — the physical diagonal of your display, as advertised by the manufacturer. Screen resolution (pixels) — the native horizontal and vertical resolution of the panel. With the diagonal, this gives your screen's exact pixel pitch. Physical screen distance (cm) — how far your eyes actually are from the glass. This is the setting people most often guess wrong. Measure it once with a tape measure; most desk setups land between 45 and 75 cm. Effect strength (%) — how much of the computed effect is blended over the page, from 0 to 35 percent. Start low. Set it to 0 at any time to switch the effect off completely. Every change applies immediately to all open tabs. There is nothing to save and no page reload required. FEATURES Physically derived rather than cosmetic — blur radii come from your actual screen geometry and viewing distance, not an arbitrary slider. Works on every website, including scrolling pages, video, and dark themes. Instant live updates across all open tabs as you adjust the sliders. A true off switch — strength 0 removes the overlay entirely, so there is no rendering cost when you are not using it. Never blocks interaction. The overlay is click-through: links, buttons, form fields, and text selection all behave normally. Fully translated into 40+ languages. PRIVACY This extension collects nothing. No analytics, no telemetry, no accounts, no external requests, no tracking of any kind. It requests a single permission — storage — used only to remember your four settings so they follow you across your browser profile. Your browsing history is never read, transmitted, or stored. All processing happens locally, and the extension works fully offline. WHO IT IS FOR People who spend long stretches reading on screens and are curious about the optics of near work: students, developers, researchers, writers, and anyone who has read about chromatic defocus and wanted to see it for themselves. It is also a demonstration tool for teaching or studying visual optics, since it makes an ordinarily invisible property of the eye's imaging directly observable. AN IMPORTANT NOTE The relationship between chromatic defocus cues and eye growth is an active area of research in both animal and human studies. It is not settled science. This extension is an optical simulation and a tool for exploring that idea — it is not a medical device, it is not a treatment, and it makes no claim to prevent, slow, correct, or cure myopia or any other condition. If you have any concern about your vision, please consult a qualified optometrist or ophthalmologist. If the effect feels uncomfortable or causes eye strain or headache, lower the strength or set it to 0 and stop using it. GETTING STARTED Install, click the toolbar icon, enter your screen diagonal, resolution, and viewing distance, then raise the strength slowly until you can just perceive it. Most people find a low setting is more than enough.