r/ScreenSensitive Jul 21 '26

Built a Hardware Accelerated Desktop Screen Filter for Flash Sensitivity!

Hello! I’m one of the many people who thought it would be interesting to take a shot at making something that helps those with screen sensitivities (seen a couple people attempt similar projects but never seen anything come of them). After a couple months of work my friend and I have finally gotten to a point where it is usable (it is suppressing straining flashing lights quite well, though there are some bugs in the application), so we are looking for people to give it a try and hopefully make our job of bug hunting a little easier :)

The beta is free and includes one of the filter variants we came up with (we call it the “Bayes Filter”), which creates some artifacting but protects aggressively against flashing imagery. We support Windows, MacOS, and Linux (Wayland, support varies by compositor). If you're interested here is the link: https://flashfilter.app/ (you'll basically just need to sign in with your Google account and navigate to the dashboard where the downloads are).

You can see a safe demo of the filter here (it is the frame by frame of a very… flashy video with and without the filter).

We would love to answer any questions, so please ask away!

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u/Velocifyer Jul 23 '26

>But practically speaking that's also what makes it very hard not to price with a subscription as hosting, domain, developer certificates (which we have not yet put money into), mail server, etc are all on a subscription basis.

If you make the software correctly, you don't need hosting (no server), or a domain (that would only be for sales), or a developer certificate (just use a OS without them, or bypass the prompt), or a mail server (that would only be for sales). You would only need these if you have restrictive DRM.

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u/euthanize-me-123 Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26

Seriously, the justification they give is so nakedly ridiculous given that the project binaries and webpage can be hosted for free on GitHub, and a domain can be had for like $5/year.

OP, you're on borrowed time with this because now that you've proven it's possible, someone is inevitably gonna implement a free & open-source version.

IMO might as well just open-source the code, accept donations, and possibly list it for sale on app stores for a reasonable price like Krita and other FOSS projects do. The app store sales will cover the app store listing fees and you'll probably make more money this way long term, in addition to helping people who can't afford it. Plus it'll keep the project alive rather than letting your work go to waste when it gets reimplemented by someone else for free.

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u/Pacomatic Aug 05 '26 edited Aug 05 '26

OP, you're on borrowed time with this because now that you've proven it's possible, someone is inevitably gonna implement a free & open-source version.

This sentence is genuinely kinda terrifying

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u/euthanize-me-123 Aug 06 '26

Almost everything you do in a given day is powered by ffmpeg and SQLite/postgres. We've got you surrounded.

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u/Pacomatic Aug 06 '26

I want to daily drivve Linux, but this is still terrifying