I have a newborn, and the early mornings have been crazy. I usually stay awake beside my wife while she breastfeeds, waiting to burp the baby and sleep.

To keep me awake and help her stay awake, I started reading a few pages of books during these moments, but I was using the flashlight on my phone, which was very bright and unpleasant.

I was already considering buying a reading light, but that morning, in a moment of insomnia, I had the idea of creating an app that used the phone screen as a flashlight. I got up quickly and typed a prompt in ChatGPT, which generated something very close to what I imagined.

I copied the code and put it online using GitHub Pages right after. The whole process took about 40 minutes (and at least made me very sleepy right after; I fell asleep).

I used the app that same night, and this morning, I decided to improve it, improve some things, add some simple features, and also turn it into a PWA app that can be installed (so I could use it in full screen).

I liked the result so much that I published the app for free. It's straightforward, but I hope it will be useful to more people:

https://readinglight.app/