30 ms·

Night Shift compared to f.lux

430 points by mattiemass 10y ago

Brendinooo 10y ago
It's a good enough argument for a current user like me to keep using it, but I don't know if the benefit is tangible enough for most people (or me on a new system someday) to seek out an alternative to Night Shift. Makes me wonder if the placebo effect would come into play here as well.
- Razengan 10y ago
  I'm going to try using both in turn on alternate days, and see if there's any difference (to my personal wellness).
smnscu 10y ago
One important advantage with Night Shift is that it doesn't mess up YouTube videos. I get weird artefacts with f.lux when watching videos, and overall Night Shift seems to perform slightly better as well. I'm sad for f.lux but for now I stopped using it. edit: I don't get the artefacts with NS but I do get the same white border on the mouse cursor after watching a video full-screen for some time
- BigJono 10y ago
  This seems like a bug. I've been using f.lux for years across multiple home and work computers and never had a problem with YouTube videos.
  - Snackchez 10y ago
    I have artifact issues with f.lux whenever I'm watching videos in full screen mode. It seems that anything "white" coloured becomes fluorescent. Making the nav / time bar pop up with my mouse seems to make this all disappear. This is on a 2014 MacBook Air running the 2nd latest version of OS X.
    - BigJono 10y ago
      Interesting. Is it a subtle effect? Maybe I just haven't noticed it before.
      - Snackchez 10y ago
        Not really. These artifacts are very bright white coloured. It's almost as if F.lux can't deal with certain shades of white and forgets them.
        DiabloD3 10y ago
        F.lux doesn't "deal" with anything, it just takes your existing ICC/ICM file, alters it, and resets your GPU's LUT with it. I've had the same issue with an Intel GPU'ed MBPR 13" (ie, no Radeon or Nvidia GPU also), and it rarely happened in OSX, but only during certain HW accelerated overlays (such as YUV acceleration in videos, or OpenGL programs doing sufficiently interesting things). I don't think F.lux has the bug, but OSX's rendering pipeline does. I had similar issues with color profiles I generated myself that noticeably differed from the screen itself (Apple has yet to produce an actually fucking accurate-to-sRGB screen, I don't care how many Photoshop jockeys praise their lord and savior, St. Jobs). So, yeah. In other news, my MBPr runs Windows 10 and I'm never going back; and I've also never seen the bug here. The side effect is: F.lux's Windows version is not feature complete with OSX's, and noticeably redshifts at different times than OSX does depending on what settings you prefer.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - pyre 10y ago
        It's not very subtle. I just whipped together an example[1]. Note that I had to take a photo of the screen with my phone to show what the screen is actually displaying. [1] http://imgur.com/a/2amF8 http://imgur.com/a/2amF8
    - ahh 10y ago
      I have had the same bug for about a year.
  - Filligree 10y ago
    I've got the same problem. It disappears if any UI element other than the video is visible; this includes even UI elements inside the video itself. But I usually just leave my mouse over the Mac menu bar.
  - spilk 10y ago
    It occurs on machines with Intel integrated video only in my experience. Does it on my 2011 MBA and 2016 touchbarMBP, but not my 2012 rMBP. It's well documented here: https://forum.justgetflux.com/topic/58/strange-colors-blue-fringed-mouse-pointer-on-full-screen-youtube-when-f-lux-is-active https://forum.justgetflux.com/topic/58/strange-colors-blue-f...
    - krackers 10y ago
      I always use gfxcard status to force machines into integrated only mode and I've still never encountered that issue.
      - coldtea 10y ago
        Perhaps because it is related with the automated switching which you disable in this way? (Also if you have an external display connected, "integrated only mode" is ignored in gfx).
    - rodorgas 10y ago
      F.lux team claims that's an Apple bug. If it's true, Apple doesn't have reasons to fix it.
  - bdrool 10y ago
    It happens when you play full-screen videos on a mac. The full screen mode displays in a more direct screen access manner (but only after any overlays, like video controls, have faded out). In this mode, f.lux's color profile changes can cause weird blooming issues, especially in bright ares of the video (like a blue sky). Apple seems to have built their solution in a way that avoids this issue. It's likely f.lux cannot ever do anything about it. Until Night Shift was available, I've been in the habit of of creating "low color temp" color profiles and manually setting my display to them when it gets late in the day (a crude approximation of f.lux, but ultimately the same thing they are doing). It always produced the same artifact. Incidentally, I find it strange that f.lux is claiming they output so much less blue light than Apple's Night Shift, since as far as I can tell, all they do is shift the color profile, just like Night Shift does. Anyone who has seen the video issues I'm describing above can attest that there is still plenty of blue light coming out of the screen with f.lux (and manual color profile adjustments). All three accomplish the same thing, it's just that Apple's implementation appears to be cleaner and work in more cases (not surprising -- it's their system, so presumably they know how to integrate with it better than anyone). I think perhaps at most they have a point that the default settings are maybe not "warm" enough, but that's the only flaw I can see.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    I have constant artifacts with flux enabled and youtube videos.
- harrygeez 10y ago
  I remember having this problem, but I don't remember getting it anymore now. Try updating your flux? It doesn't update by itself apparently.
- rodorgas 10y ago
  You can fix it using this Chrome Extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/videofixer-for-flux/gmkeppffdejhpppfnbgakglpoeaobhhh https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/videofixer-for-flu...
  - EduardoBautista 10y ago
    Yes, but that would require using Chrome.
    - npunt 10y ago
      ... and trusting extensions.
      - ktta 10y ago
        ...and this extension can read and change data on ALL the sites you visit.
        arjie 10y ago
        Took me three clicks to view the source code. Have you looked at it? Bloody hell. It's a CSS file. All the hard work is in finding the problem. Which this man has done for you. In the time it took you guys to comment you could have written the user style yourself after looking at the source code. I cannot believe the degree of cargo culting that goes on on this website around security.
        pooper 10y ago
        Thank you. `opacity: 0.996 !important;` We can find the discussion where the extensions were born https://forum.justgetflux.com/post/10814 https://forum.justgetflux.com/post/10814 Looks like this is something browser vendors should incorporate? One would think that because WebKit is free and open source it should be possible to have this fix evaluated for everyone built into Safari and chrome by default.
        10y ago
- andai 10y ago
  I filed a bug for this a few weeks ago, and then issue disappeared for me (I'm on the Sierra beta builds).
- emcq 10y ago
  Having recently updated from 10.8 to 10.12 I can tell you it wasn't happening before, but definitely one of the annoyances now. My workaround for now is hovering my mouse over the control bar. For whatever reason that removes the artifacts.
  - gjtorikian 10y ago
    I assure you, before I read this comment I thought I was absolutely insane for A) Imagining the video artifacts; and B) Also moving my mouse around to get rid of them I'm so glad I'm not the only one these past few months!
- Sidnicious 10y ago
  It's not Night Shift — this seems to be fixed in 10.12.4. I filed a bug with Apple on it, and in November of last year they duped it to rdar://22180778 and said to expect a fix in 10.12.4… so I've been waiting eagerly for this update, and it looks like they followed through.
cyberferret 10y ago
I've used f.lux for years and I really like it, as I have noticed my sleep patterns have improved during that time. However, I do think that the transition is sometimes really too quick. I can be working away, deep in 'flow' and I will alarmingly perceive the screen going darker/changing a couple of times over the evening. It almost feel like I am passing out or getting a precursor to a migraine sometimes, with the change, which is quite jarring. The other thing is the constant annoying notifications of "You are going to be awake in 'x' hours". Well, actually, no - If I am up and coding until 2am, then chances of me being awake at 6am when you expect me to is just not on. I also wish they would have an 'emergency awake' function, so that when I jump on to the keyboard to fix a server outage at 5am after many hours away sleeping, that it would immediately go to full brightness there and then, rather than wait until 0630 as per normal. If I am active at that time after a long break, I am NOT going back to sleep and I have to have full illumination of all those red signals on my server dashboard! :)
- grimgrin 10y ago
  I'm not sure which OS you're on, or how old a version, but on MacOS it should be on slow transition by default, and I'm not really sure of the details on "fast transition". On Windows it actually has a more verbose option saying to transition over 60 minutes. I'm wondering if that's the default, not-Fast-transitions on MacOS?
  - cyberferret 10y ago
    Ok, Thanks, I just checked the preferences, and I noticed that 'fast transitions' was check ON, which is probably what is happening. I will test it out over the next few days and see how it goes - though I just got the update notification for 10.12.4 with Night Shift (I am currently on 10.12.3) so I am torn between trying that out instead.
- PKop 10y ago
  there is a setting in the menu bar: Disable: > For an hour > Until Sunrise > For current app
dharma1 10y ago
Somewhat related - any physical filters for backlit eInk readers? The leds on my kindle paperwhite are pretty blue
- killjoywashere 10y ago
  Navy ship's were using a lot of cut sheet thick red plastic for computer screens on the bridge.
- azdle 10y ago
  That's not a bad idea. The newest kobo reader actually has red LEDs (I assume) to fade to red at night: https://us.kobobooks.com/products/kobo-aura-one https://us.kobobooks.com/products/kobo-aura-one Hopefully amazon copies that feature for their next one.
  - wlesieutre 10y ago
    I can vouch for the Aura One, it's a lovely device. The screen color temperature adjustment goes very warm. Tough to eyeball without a side-by-side reference, but I'd guess at least down to 2200K. I've seen it referred to as RGB LEDs for the backlight, but I think it's more likely to be two-channel mixing with cool white and warm white, as is common on "tunable white" light fixtures. All you get for control is a cool/warm slider or auto, so the hardware is a bit immaterial the average user (though it would affect the blue wavelengths present in the spectrum). I think we have some sort of spectrometer around the office, I'll have to see if I can track that down and check. https://imgur.com/Irw9yhg https://imgur.com/Irw9yhg
    - wlesieutre 10y ago
      Checked the spectrum, it's a range from 6300K (cool white) down to 1700K (very warm white, could probably call it amber). I measured it at three points: the ends of the range and a point eyeballed in the middle of the UI slider, which may or may not have been quite at 50%. Points on black body curve in CIE 1931 colorspace: http://i.imgur.com/FCsdxZW.png http://i.imgur.com/FCsdxZW.png That's the curve where we define "white" light, based on the perceived color of a black body object heated to various temperatures. The naming convention is a bit strange; "warm white" refers to the orange end with relatively cool temperatures, while "cool white" refers to the blue end with relatively high temperatures. Relative spectral distributions, each normalized with the peak wavelength at 1: http://i.imgur.com/3Bw6ltt.png http://i.imgur.com/3Bw6ltt.png The "cool" spectrum is pretty typical of a phosphor converted white LED, where you get a strong peak in blue and then a smooth curve across the upper end of the spectrum produced by the phosphor. The "warm" spectrum has two peaks, dominated by red around 630nm and a smaller green peak around 530nm. You can tell just from the black body curve that they've used more than the two-channel LED mixing that I guessed in my parent post. With just two LEDs, you're basically making linear combinations of the two colors and can only move in a straight line between them. If it were only the cool white and red LEDs, the color would move along this path between 6300K white and 630nm saturated red: http://i.imgur.com/d2W3sb4.png http://i.imgur.com/d2W3sb4.png Having a 3rd channel green LED allows them to pull it back up to the black body curve. Interesting to see that they're apparently doing a 3-channel color adjustment with cool white / red / green, rather than the RGB system that people are so used to.
Razengan 10y ago
I think Apple may have deliberately chosen to go for a less severe difference in colors, so as to get more people onboard the general idea of colors shifting through the day, at first. Expect it to evolve in a future macOS/iOS (hopefully along with the introduction of a true dark mode.) f.lux, while more effective, may be off-putting to most people. The medicinal orangeness was a bit sickening to me when I first tried f.lux, to the point that I didn't want to use it, though I warmed up to it later.
- harrygeez 10y ago
  This. Most of my friends are like "wtf is your screen so yellow" like every time. I thought Night Shift on iOS will change that but nope. I guess it takes time.
  - rukuu001 10y ago
    Sure, I had the "what's up with your screen" comments too. Then I'd turn off flux while they were watching & everybody said the same thing as the screen returned to blue-white: "ewwww."
- jordansmithnz 10y ago
  Exactly this. Apple is building this feature for the average user. If they presented a screen too different from normal, most people would turn it off, thinking that it looks ugly - precisely the opposite of what they want.
  - mrbill 10y ago
    I was working a laaate shift (datacenter migration) at work one night and came back to my desk around 4am.. my screens were straight up dark burnt orange. I thought something was broken, was checking cables, rebooted, etc, until I realized that I'd just never seen what f.lux did at 4 in the morning before. Felt pretty stupid.
    - meric 10y ago
jeron 10y ago
Are the charts for Night Shift on MacOS? The dataset provided at the very bottom is for the iPad Pro...
killjoywashere 10y ago
They are both terrible compared to Quicksilver's little brother, Nocturne. Nocturne can turn a Mac full red monochrome. Coming from the military, it's amazing.
- BigJono 10y ago
  I remember doing this with f.lux back in the day. Unless they've removed it from the options?
  - skuhn 10y ago
    There is a Darkroom mode that is red-on-black.
    - kalleboo 10y ago
      Warning I tried this on my Mac and it's broken for me - it turned the screen completely black and I had to force-shut down the whole computer to get rid of it.
      - mjmj 10y ago
        This beta fixed dark room for me: https://forum.justgetflux.com/topic/3466/f-lux-beta-39-9 https://forum.justgetflux.com/topic/3466/f-lux-beta-39-9
        kalleboo 10y ago
        Cool, thanks, I'll try it out
- copperx 10y ago
  Cool, I never knew that Nocturne was developed by the military. Also, do you have a working link for it? Every link I've tried is down.
  - 10y ago
russdill 10y ago
Gnome also has a similar feature now, night light http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/02/gnome-night-light-blue-light-filter-linux http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/02/gnome-night-light-blue-li...
orthecreedence 10y ago
Sort of on-topic, I've been using Redshift <https://github.com/jonls/redshift> https://github.com/jonls/redshift> for years and love it (both windows and linux).
- nebabyte 10y ago
  your link accidentally included the > Also thanks, uninstalled flux due to annoyance at lack of full customizability over schedules and hue ranges. ended up finding a more general 'display output' modifier, I'll look into this one though.
- anuragsoni 10y ago
  I've used both f.lux and redshift over the years. f.lux worked really well on the mac at work, but I had problems with it on my linux machines. Was using redshift till a few days ago. I recently switched to the "Night Light" that Gnome added as that also works on Wayland (I think f.lux/redshift don't support wayland yet) [1] https://www.gnome.org/news/2017/03/gnome-3-24-released/ https://www.gnome.org/news/2017/03/gnome-3-24-released/
  - j_koreth 10y ago
    Actually no program can support Wayland to change color temperatures except for the compositor.
    - NoGravitas 10y ago
      You're right, though the compositor could provide an ipc mechanism to let another program tell it to change color temperatures. Sway (a Wayland compositor/window manager) works with a patched RedShift, and I assume this is how it does it.
      - colemickens 10y ago
        If I understand correctly, they've implemented a new wayland protocol (extension?) https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway/blob/master/protocols/gamma-control.xml https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway/blob/master/protocols/gamma...
psiclops 10y ago
As I have my daytime f.lux setting at 5500k, I don't plan to change over. I prefer to have the blue light reduced slightly all the time
joemaller1 10y ago
My life doesn't necessarily fit into a sunrise-sundown bracketed timeframe. I regularly need to postpone dimming until later in the evening, and then return to full color brightness before dawn. F.lux refuses to do this. Night Shift (at least on iOS) does.
- bostonvaulter2 10y ago
  You can easily return to full color brightness before dawn with f.lux simple hit the Disable Until Sunrise button.
  - hvidgaard 10y ago
    You should be able to plot in your regular schedule, and have that be the default. Having to hit a button every morning and/or evening is just poor usability.
    - asendra 10y ago
      But how will they further the understanding of human biology! [0] [0] - "Our goal is to further the understanding of human biology, not just turn things orange on a timer. It's a longer term undertaking and a much more difficult one." https://forum.justgetflux.com/topic/237/custom-sunset-sunrus.. https://forum.justgetflux.com/topic/237/custom-sunset-sunrus....
- kristofferR 10y ago
  Yeah, Flux is useless in places far from the equator. I don't want my screen to dim at sunset/6PM.
  - qqg3 10y ago
    Why not? Its better for your eyes if you're working in dim rooms.
jluxenberg 10y ago
If you use and love f.lux, consider donating! https://justgetflux.com/promo/paypal.html?ab=8-planet5 https://justgetflux.com/promo/paypal.html?ab=8-planet5
- najati83 10y ago
  For me to consider donating, they should consider releasing the source code.
- andrewshadura 10y ago
  Open-source first, donations second.
lmg643 10y ago
I must be out of step with the times as I'm surprised by the favorable comments about Night Shift. For my eyes, the f.lux nighttime adjustment and configurability is great. at work, i use it during daytime hours as well, helps greatly with eye strain. Night Shift is like an introduction of the concept to a mass audience, surely it has a positive benefit for the uninitiated but there's a lot missing for folks who rely on it. Android is much better with multiple applications available to control this. I thought it would have been a good gesture for apple to buy f.lux and get the "market leader", and some built in goodwill, as opposed to just copying them, but I guess such is life when you are the largest corporation in the world.
- MBCook 10y ago
  If Apple bought f.lux they'd cease all development for all non-Apple platforms and people would FREAK OUT. They wouldn't get any goodwill.
  - gurkendoktor 10y ago
    People would freak out over Apple buying f.lux, and then install Redshift.
- zeveb 10y ago
  > I'm surprised by the favorable comments about Night Shift. Apple made it, which means that Apple's PR shills & Apple's fanboys think it's revolutionary. These are the same folks who proudly claim that wireless headphones are awesome & losing the escape key is great for vi-users. Frankly I think theirs are low-signal comments, but … to each his own, I suppose.
samsamoa 10y ago
Any hints on getting f.lux to work in sync with a Hue bulb on macOS?
lucisferre 10y ago
I love f.lux but I always end up uninstalling it because of how it messes up with games when they are running. Performance tanks and I get tired of switching out and killing f.lux every time.
- dhritzkiv 10y ago
  It might be annoying to do it for every game you play, but f.lux can be disabled per-app.
- Soinou 10y ago
  Yeah that's because they insist on refreshing the gamma really fast, and that messes up a lot with games. I had the same problem in the past, and that's why I made my own f.lux where I can just change the refresh interval and set it to change the gamma every one second or something. There's no point in updating it so fast.
- sundvor 10y ago
  Disable transitions and it won't be a problem. At least it isn't for me, on Nvidia.
lighttower 10y ago
TLDR >To be fair, we thought it was pretty easy after our first year making f.lux (Night Shift today looks a whole lot like our first version). We figured we'd solved the blue light problem and that there just wasn't much left to do. We couldn't have been more wrong. Every person has individual needs, and those needs are different based on your sensitivity to light, your own chronobiology (imagine early birds and night owls), your own schedule, and other factors too. Those needs change across seasons, and over your lifetime. Today our approach is different: we are working every day to understand how light affects human biology, not strictly sleep, and we are constantly applying what we learn to updates and new features for f.lux.
keithkml 10y ago
Pretty sure this is all snake oil — both f.lux and Night Shift. I don't doubt that blue light affects our brains. But I see no evidence that color filter software has any impact. If the issue is the number of blue photons per square millimeter of our retinas, why isn't it being discussed as such? This means screen brightness and distance from your face would have a much bigger impact than a color filter. I personally think the f.lux team knows this and that's why their FAQ is devoid of any questions about effectiveness. FWIW the only person I've known to use f.lux is an insomniac who barely ever sleeps and is always tired.
- UnoriginalGuy 10y ago
  I cannot say I follow. You acknowledge that blue light does affect our brains and sleep patterns, but then dismiss a solution which limits the amount of blue light while toting an alternative which also acts to reduce the amount of blue light (brightness & distance). Brightness is meant to apply evenly across the entire color spectrum of a display (it doesn't in reality but that is a convenient fiction without getting into the weeds). Color filters on the other hand reduce the luminosity of only blue light which can be independently measured (see the link). I know plenty of people who use f.lux and tons more who use Night Shift on iOS devices. My wife is one of them, wakes up in the middle of the night and uses her phone, goes back to sleep a lot sooner after they added Night Shift than before. Obviously all anecdotes are anecdotes but study after study have shown that blue light negatively impacts sleep, and blue filter glasses have been shown by at least one Harvard study to help aleve the impact.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >Pretty sure this is all snake oil — both f.lux and Night Shift. I don't doubt that blue light affects our brains. But I see no evidence that color filter software has any impact. A color filter such as in Flux and NS removes blue light. >If the issue is the number of blue photons per square millimeter of our retinas, why isn't it being discussed as such? This means screen brightness and distance from your face would have a much bigger impact than a color filter. No, it doesn't mean that at all. Or rather, it does, but it's a moot point. All you're saying is: you can reduce blue light with an orange filter, but you can also go away from your screen or dim it so you can't see it. Or even not use a computer at all. While all of those things hold, the "orange filter" achieves the same thing (removing blue light) without affecting our ability to work regularly on the computer (increased distance, less brightness, etc). I'm not sure how people come up with such logic errors. >FWIW the only person I've known to use f.lux is an insomniac who barely ever sleeps and is always tired. It's not worth much. It's not supposed to cure insomnia (which has 2000+ different causes), just to keep up with the natural light changes and improve sleep.
metafunctor 10y ago
One thing I find quite annoying about f.lux is that it doesn't just have a simple custom schedule setting. Night Shift has that, and it's great. I live very far north. In the winter the sun is up for just a few hours, and in the summer it's down for just a few. Obviously, I don't want to follow the sun for my sleeping rhythm, and exactly nobody over here does. Most of the time, I go to bed based on the clock. We use lots of artificial lighting in the winter, and window blinds in the summertime. I'd like to simply configure when I expect to go to bed, and possibly when I expect to wake up. With f.lux, I have to try to find a location on the globe where the sun matches my actual sleeping cycle, and hope that it stays that way (it doesn't). I did notice that there's a new "far from the equator" setting in the latest version, but I don't understand what it does and how it's supposed to help. Just give me a schedule setting.
- dovdovdov 10y ago
  well, the only thing I find quite annoying about f.lux is this butthurt brag we see every now and then. It's a nice tool, but their communication is slightly unprofessional.
  - sarreph 10y ago
    To be honest, I'm not going to hold a "butthurt" brag here-and-there against them. They've offered a revolutionary — one that can improve people's HEALTH° — software product at no cost to the consumer. The moment said product reaches peak market interest, one of the biggest companies in the world comes along and snatches it from them. (Disclosure: I don't know if there was a bid made, in which case my argument is weakened.) So much for "Good artists copy, great artists steal"[0], eh... If you were the 'great artist' in this situation, I don't think you'd sit there without letting off a bit of steam via technically correct public information as to how your product is objectively better (at what it's supposed to do). °How many software utility companies can say that?! [0] - https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso
    - angry-hacker 10y ago
dayaz36 10y ago
How does f.lux make money?
int_19h 10y ago
Does anyone have a good suggestion for an Android app that does blue filtering, and: 1. Doesn't require root. 2. Actually filters blue out, instead of adding red (i.e. a pure black screen should remain pure black). The built-in feature in Nougat previews was great, until they removed it...
- mappu 10y ago
  The built-in LiveDisplay feature in LineageOS can do this without root.
  - int_19h 10y ago
    Sorry, I forgot to specify stock Android as well.
- EpicBlackCrayon 10y ago
  Twilight?
  - int_19h 10y ago
    It doesn't pass #2 - the black areas of the screen are visibly red. Every application that I've tried so far does this, which leads me to believe that it is an inherent limitation in stock Android APIs (which also explains why apps that require root can work around that limitation).
    - rym_ 10y ago
      Latest release on my Galaxy S7 supports this, but it's built-in and would like to be able to set it a bit more extreme than it allows.
- laxentasken 10y ago
  I guess twilight is out of the question? Outstanding app imo.
- GranPC 10y ago
nice_byte 10y ago
I've no idea why people use this type of software. I tried it a couple times, and it just annoys the hell out of me. It makes the colors on my monitor all kinds of messed up, and doesn't have any positive effect whatsoever on the tiredness of my eyes. If anything, the effect is negative: the messed up color makes text hard to read.
- flurdy 10y ago
  Try to customise the strength to only a slight change for sunset and bedtime. So hardly any colour distortion, mostly just less bright. And enable the slow transition. Use that for a few days to make sure you no longer notice it. Then one late evening disable it. Every time I do that it as if I have been hit with full beam car light. Really shocks me how bright a non f.lux/night shift/redshift screen is without them. I now really struggle to look at a non-adjusted screen in the evenings. And I am glad my eyes don't have that strain normally. I could possibly deal without it on a small laptop screen by just dimming it but need these tools when using my normal home 34" monitor. That is a lot of brightness otherwise.
jfoldager 10y ago
There is already lots of blue light in my room, when I use a computer at night. I don't see how it would help to remove all the blue light from the screen, when the room is still bathed in it. I use quite warm light, and have it even warmer in the evening, but still, the standard settings for Night Shift looks very orange to my eyes. I would love if Night Shift could just shift the white balance to match the surrounding. Does anyone have experience with True Tone on the 9.7-inch iPad Pro? I imagine would work like that.
michelb 10y ago
I'd say a big plus of f.lux is that it works on my 2009 mac pro and 2011 macbook pro, while Night Shift does not.
ClassyJacket 10y ago
Night Shift lets you set a custom schedule. Somehow, insanely, Flux does not. It's the only thing I want, so Night Shift automatically wins. I don't know why they're so stubborn on that issue, I would've even paid a few bucks for a "premium" version with that feature, but now Apple is eating their lunch. Bye forever, Flux.
- aithoughts 10y ago
  Setting your wake-up time isn't enough? I am new to Flux but unless they introduced this feature in the last 6 days, I don't understand your critique.
DCKing 10y ago
When it comes to blue light filtering, all I want is something with good defaults (for me) that works unobtrusively. My first days of using Night Shift has worked exactly like that. I don't particularly care about configurability of the tool (I live on a pretty well supported latitude I guess). Moreover Night Shift presents significantly less artifacting in videos based on my brief experience. Transitions are also far less jarring than they are with f.lux. So yeah, I guess f.lux will be the better choice for those who really care about the details of their blue light filter. Night Shift, like LineageOS' LiveDisplay, Windows' Night Time and GNOME's Night Light, take a simpler approach that will get you 98% of the way there in a few clicks, which should be good enough for most people.
- jamesgeck0 10y ago
  The issue pointed out by the herf is that what is unobtrusive is not a good default, because it doesn't actually work. You have to eliminate lot of blue light to get any benefit. Night Shift's defaults aren't getting you 98% of the way there; they're getting you maybe 15% of the way there.
Udo_Schmitz 10y ago
I tried f.lux on the Mac and was very disappointed with the results. To me it looked like a red film overlaid on the screen. Distracting and ugly. Night Shift on iOS looks much more natural.
kartickv 10y ago
How does Night Shift's reddest setting compare with Flux?
dcdevito 10y ago
Why is this on HN's front page? Dumb
philliphaydon 10y ago
Are there any scientific claims to blue light? Or real studies? I tried using flux for a month and ended up with sore eyes which I don't get when I don't use flux. So I don't know if this blue thing is a legit thing or not. My flat mate says he sleeps better. But I just get sore eyes.
FrozenVoid 10y ago
I've just turned the blue/magenta/cyan sliders in monitor controls to 0%(Blue components in images appear as black/grey pixels). Blue light damages the retina and messes up circadian cycles: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4734149/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4734149/
rocky1138 10y ago
"Our circadian system is actually not reacting to small changes in "color". Instead, it is mostly reacting to the "amount" of light. Our eyes are extremely good at distinguishing little shades of color from each other, but this is a different system than the one that drives circadian rhythms." Is there any data to support this?
- kortex 10y ago
  One of the primary drivers of melatonin suppression is the IPRGC [1]. So yes, what seems to be more important than the perceived color is the intensity of light in the 460-480 nm range. Which, if the spectral data in the original post are correct, means that NightShift has a major disadvantage. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsically_photosensitive_retinal_ganglion_cells https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsically_photosensitive_r...]
owenversteeg 10y ago
I've found something pretty interesting myself when using redshift. If I set the display directly to 3000K or so, it looks really weird. Same if I fade from 6700->3000K. But if I set it to 1000K and then to 3000K, it looks fine. Anybody else do this to "prepare" themselves?
AJ007 10y ago
For all of the squabbles between Night Shift and f.lux, both are doing a great job compared to what we had before. I am sure they will both continue to improve and become standard in all platforms I am a lot more concerned about street lights, which are headed in the exact wrong direction: https://www.ama-assn.org/ama-adopts-guidance-reduce-harm-high-intensity-street-lights https://www.ama-assn.org/ama-adopts-guidance-reduce-harm-hig...
craigc 10y ago
It seems like the replies here are very much in defense of Apple which I am not surprised about, but I do not really consider it to be warranted. I have been using f.lux for years and it has definitely had a huge impact on me. I don't have any scientific data to back up my claims, but f.lux is a fantastic product. When you consider that f.lux released a side loading version of their app on iOS and then Apple threatened to remove their developer license, and then after it was pulled, released their own ripped off version of the software that does not work as well, you can understand how they might be upset about that. I understand that is business, but as someone who has used both I find f.lux to be completely superior. Apple probably should have bought f.lux and then integrated it into their products, but instead decided to do it themselves. I'm not saying the software is earth shattering, but they spent years on the problem, and it feels as if Apple implemented their version in a few days. I think Apple should open up the screen/display APIs on iOS to allow f.lux and other similar apps to be installed. I would happily pay for it rather than use night shift.
- g0atbutt 10y ago
  The reason f.lux sideloaded app got pulled is because they didn't release their source code. Instead, f.lux relied on loading/patching a binary that bypassed some of iOS security features and could load unsigned binarys (read: it could then run pirated apps).
  - dota_fanatic 10y ago
    This order of operations is incorrect, though the grandparent set you up a bit by saying "released on iOS". In order to install the f.lux app you would first need to be jailbroken, ie able to run pirated apps.
    - damnfinecoffee 10y ago
      Not true, f.lux released a version of their app in the App Store. Apple pulled their app and so they added another method to sideload it https://justgetflux.com/sideload/ https://justgetflux.com/sideload/ using xcode. Apple then revoked their development license which broke that method as well. It's always been available as a jailbreak tweak but it's also been available to the general, non-jailbroken public
jaxn 10y ago
Windows 10 has a similar feature called Night Light. I have it set to Sunset/Sunrise. The $49 Kindle Fire has a similar feature. I appreciate the work f.lux did, but this is going to be a core feature of every OS now, and none of them bought their tech to do it. That is a tough spot to be in, but it is probably time to start winding the project down.
- kalleboo 10y ago
  I just wonder if they're waiting for some patent to be granted to strike...
turrini 10y ago
Or you can go to astronomy mode (linux): xcalib -green .1 0 1 -alter xcalib -blue .1 0 1 -alter
nimish 10y ago
I noticed a massive battery life improvement after removing f.lux and using night shift/night light on mac and windows. Far less stuttering as well. Whatever f.lux is doing is not worth the janky implementation.
sanguy 10y ago
I loved f.lux, but now I don't need it. Just like many other utilities before the good ones eventually get adopted as base functionality. They should have sold it when they could have....
jorvi 10y ago
Night Shift: > Doesn't apply to projectors or TVs > Doesn't mess with fluidity (turning Flux on or off gives massive framedrops > Doesn't give weird artefacts on YouTube Flux devs also ignored all (!) my e-mails about fixing how Flux reads its settings. You can directly edit the settings file via Terminal, but Flux ignores all the values you set and simply sticks to the ones set in the app itself.. even after a restart of the app or a reboot.
homakov 10y ago
I'm very sensitive to blue light and been using flux for few years. After trying nigth shift for few days I'm back to flux which actually works

430 points by mattiemass 10y ago

It's a good enough argument for a current user like me to keep using it, but I don't know if the benefit is tangible enough for most people (or me on a new system someday) to seek out an alternative to Night Shift. Makes me wonder if the placebo effect would come into play here as well.

Razengan 10y ago
I'm going to try using both in turn on alternate days, and see if there's any difference (to my personal wellness).

smnscu 10y ago

One important advantage with Night Shift is that it doesn't mess up YouTube videos. I get weird artefacts with f.lux when watching videos, and overall Night Shift seems to perform slightly better as well. I'm sad for f.lux but for now I stopped using it. edit: I don't get the artefacts with NS but I do get the same white border on the mouse cursor after watching a video full-screen for some time

BigJono 10y ago
This seems like a bug. I've been using f.lux for years across multiple home and work computers and never had a problem with YouTube videos.
- Snackchez 10y ago
  I have artifact issues with f.lux whenever I'm watching videos in full screen mode. It seems that anything "white" coloured becomes fluorescent. Making the nav / time bar pop up with my mouse seems to make this all disappear. This is on a 2014 MacBook Air running the 2nd latest version of OS X.
  - BigJono 10y ago
    Interesting. Is it a subtle effect? Maybe I just haven't noticed it before.
    - Snackchez 10y ago
      Not really. These artifacts are very bright white coloured. It's almost as if F.lux can't deal with certain shades of white and forgets them.
      - DiabloD3 10y ago
        F.lux doesn't "deal" with anything, it just takes your existing ICC/ICM file, alters it, and resets your GPU's LUT with it. I've had the same issue with an Intel GPU'ed MBPR 13" (ie, no Radeon or Nvidia GPU also), and it rarely happened in OSX, but only during certain HW accelerated overlays (such as YUV acceleration in videos, or OpenGL programs doing sufficiently interesting things). I don't think F.lux has the bug, but OSX's rendering pipeline does. I had similar issues with color profiles I generated myself that noticeably differed from the screen itself (Apple has yet to produce an actually fucking accurate-to-sRGB screen, I don't care how many Photoshop jockeys praise their lord and savior, St. Jobs). So, yeah. In other news, my MBPr runs Windows 10 and I'm never going back; and I've also never seen the bug here. The side effect is: F.lux's Windows version is not feature complete with OSX's, and noticeably redshifts at different times than OSX does depending on what settings you prefer.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - pyre 10y ago
      It's not very subtle. I just whipped together an example[1]. Note that I had to take a photo of the screen with my phone to show what the screen is actually displaying. [1] http://imgur.com/a/2amF8 http://imgur.com/a/2amF8
  - ahh 10y ago
    I have had the same bug for about a year.
- Filligree 10y ago
  I've got the same problem. It disappears if any UI element other than the video is visible; this includes even UI elements inside the video itself. But I usually just leave my mouse over the Mac menu bar.
- spilk 10y ago
  It occurs on machines with Intel integrated video only in my experience. Does it on my 2011 MBA and 2016 touchbarMBP, but not my 2012 rMBP. It's well documented here: https://forum.justgetflux.com/topic/58/strange-colors-blue-fringed-mouse-pointer-on-full-screen-youtube-when-f-lux-is-active https://forum.justgetflux.com/topic/58/strange-colors-blue-f...
  - krackers 10y ago
    I always use gfxcard status to force machines into integrated only mode and I've still never encountered that issue.
    - coldtea 10y ago
      Perhaps because it is related with the automated switching which you disable in this way? (Also if you have an external display connected, "integrated only mode" is ignored in gfx).
  - rodorgas 10y ago
    F.lux team claims that's an Apple bug. If it's true, Apple doesn't have reasons to fix it.
- bdrool 10y ago
  It happens when you play full-screen videos on a mac. The full screen mode displays in a more direct screen access manner (but only after any overlays, like video controls, have faded out). In this mode, f.lux's color profile changes can cause weird blooming issues, especially in bright ares of the video (like a blue sky). Apple seems to have built their solution in a way that avoids this issue. It's likely f.lux cannot ever do anything about it. Until Night Shift was available, I've been in the habit of of creating "low color temp" color profiles and manually setting my display to them when it gets late in the day (a crude approximation of f.lux, but ultimately the same thing they are doing). It always produced the same artifact. Incidentally, I find it strange that f.lux is claiming they output so much less blue light than Apple's Night Shift, since as far as I can tell, all they do is shift the color profile, just like Night Shift does. Anyone who has seen the video issues I'm describing above can attest that there is still plenty of blue light coming out of the screen with f.lux (and manual color profile adjustments). All three accomplish the same thing, it's just that Apple's implementation appears to be cleaner and work in more cases (not surprising -- it's their system, so presumably they know how to integrate with it better than anyone). I think perhaps at most they have a point that the default settings are maybe not "warm" enough, but that's the only flaw I can see.
- coldtea 10y ago
  I have constant artifacts with flux enabled and youtube videos.
harrygeez 10y ago
I remember having this problem, but I don't remember getting it anymore now. Try updating your flux? It doesn't update by itself apparently.
rodorgas 10y ago
You can fix it using this Chrome Extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/videofixer-for-flux/gmkeppffdejhpppfnbgakglpoeaobhhh https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/videofixer-for-flu...
- EduardoBautista 10y ago
  Yes, but that would require using Chrome.
  - npunt 10y ago
    ... and trusting extensions.
    - ktta 10y ago
      ...and this extension can read and change data on ALL the sites you visit.
      - arjie 10y ago
        Took me three clicks to view the source code. Have you looked at it? Bloody hell. It's a CSS file. All the hard work is in finding the problem. Which this man has done for you. In the time it took you guys to comment you could have written the user style yourself after looking at the source code. I cannot believe the degree of cargo culting that goes on on this website around security.
        pooper 10y ago
        Thank you. `opacity: 0.996 !important;` We can find the discussion where the extensions were born https://forum.justgetflux.com/post/10814 https://forum.justgetflux.com/post/10814 Looks like this is something browser vendors should incorporate? One would think that because WebKit is free and open source it should be possible to have this fix evaluated for everyone built into Safari and chrome by default.
        10y ago
andai 10y ago
I filed a bug for this a few weeks ago, and then issue disappeared for me (I'm on the Sierra beta builds).
emcq 10y ago
Having recently updated from 10.8 to 10.12 I can tell you it wasn't happening before, but definitely one of the annoyances now. My workaround for now is hovering my mouse over the control bar. For whatever reason that removes the artifacts.
- gjtorikian 10y ago
  I assure you, before I read this comment I thought I was absolutely insane for A) Imagining the video artifacts; and B) Also moving my mouse around to get rid of them I'm so glad I'm not the only one these past few months!
Sidnicious 10y ago
It's not Night Shift — this seems to be fixed in 10.12.4. I filed a bug with Apple on it, and in November of last year they duped it to rdar://22180778 and said to expect a fix in 10.12.4… so I've been waiting eagerly for this update, and it looks like they followed through.

cyberferret 10y ago

I've used f.lux for years and I really like it, as I have noticed my sleep patterns have improved during that time. However, I do think that the transition is sometimes really too quick. I can be working away, deep in 'flow' and I will alarmingly perceive the screen going darker/changing a couple of times over the evening. It almost feel like I am passing out or getting a precursor to a migraine sometimes, with the change, which is quite jarring. The other thing is the constant annoying notifications of "You are going to be awake in 'x' hours". Well, actually, no - If I am up and coding until 2am, then chances of me being awake at 6am when you expect me to is just not on. I also wish they would have an 'emergency awake' function, so that when I jump on to the keyboard to fix a server outage at 5am after many hours away sleeping, that it would immediately go to full brightness there and then, rather than wait until 0630 as per normal. If I am active at that time after a long break, I am NOT going back to sleep and I have to have full illumination of all those red signals on my server dashboard! :)

grimgrin 10y ago
I'm not sure which OS you're on, or how old a version, but on MacOS it should be on slow transition by default, and I'm not really sure of the details on "fast transition". On Windows it actually has a more verbose option saying to transition over 60 minutes. I'm wondering if that's the default, not-Fast-transitions on MacOS?
- cyberferret 10y ago
  Ok, Thanks, I just checked the preferences, and I noticed that 'fast transitions' was check ON, which is probably what is happening. I will test it out over the next few days and see how it goes - though I just got the update notification for 10.12.4 with Night Shift (I am currently on 10.12.3) so I am torn between trying that out instead.
PKop 10y ago
there is a setting in the menu bar: Disable: > For an hour > Until Sunrise > For current app

dharma1 10y ago

Somewhat related - any physical filters for backlit eInk readers? The leds on my kindle paperwhite are pretty blue

killjoywashere 10y ago
Navy ship's were using a lot of cut sheet thick red plastic for computer screens on the bridge.
azdle 10y ago
That's not a bad idea. The newest kobo reader actually has red LEDs (I assume) to fade to red at night: https://us.kobobooks.com/products/kobo-aura-one https://us.kobobooks.com/products/kobo-aura-one Hopefully amazon copies that feature for their next one.
- wlesieutre 10y ago
  I can vouch for the Aura One, it's a lovely device. The screen color temperature adjustment goes very warm. Tough to eyeball without a side-by-side reference, but I'd guess at least down to 2200K. I've seen it referred to as RGB LEDs for the backlight, but I think it's more likely to be two-channel mixing with cool white and warm white, as is common on "tunable white" light fixtures. All you get for control is a cool/warm slider or auto, so the hardware is a bit immaterial the average user (though it would affect the blue wavelengths present in the spectrum). I think we have some sort of spectrometer around the office, I'll have to see if I can track that down and check. https://imgur.com/Irw9yhg https://imgur.com/Irw9yhg
  - wlesieutre 10y ago
    Checked the spectrum, it's a range from 6300K (cool white) down to 1700K (very warm white, could probably call it amber). I measured it at three points: the ends of the range and a point eyeballed in the middle of the UI slider, which may or may not have been quite at 50%. Points on black body curve in CIE 1931 colorspace: http://i.imgur.com/FCsdxZW.png http://i.imgur.com/FCsdxZW.png That's the curve where we define "white" light, based on the perceived color of a black body object heated to various temperatures. The naming convention is a bit strange; "warm white" refers to the orange end with relatively cool temperatures, while "cool white" refers to the blue end with relatively high temperatures. Relative spectral distributions, each normalized with the peak wavelength at 1: http://i.imgur.com/3Bw6ltt.png http://i.imgur.com/3Bw6ltt.png The "cool" spectrum is pretty typical of a phosphor converted white LED, where you get a strong peak in blue and then a smooth curve across the upper end of the spectrum produced by the phosphor. The "warm" spectrum has two peaks, dominated by red around 630nm and a smaller green peak around 530nm. You can tell just from the black body curve that they've used more than the two-channel LED mixing that I guessed in my parent post. With just two LEDs, you're basically making linear combinations of the two colors and can only move in a straight line between them. If it were only the cool white and red LEDs, the color would move along this path between 6300K white and 630nm saturated red: http://i.imgur.com/d2W3sb4.png http://i.imgur.com/d2W3sb4.png Having a 3rd channel green LED allows them to pull it back up to the black body curve. Interesting to see that they're apparently doing a 3-channel color adjustment with cool white / red / green, rather than the RGB system that people are so used to.

Razengan 10y ago

I think Apple may have deliberately chosen to go for a less severe difference in colors, so as to get more people onboard the general idea of colors shifting through the day, at first. Expect it to evolve in a future macOS/iOS (hopefully along with the introduction of a true dark mode.) f.lux, while more effective, may be off-putting to most people. The medicinal orangeness was a bit sickening to me when I first tried f.lux, to the point that I didn't want to use it, though I warmed up to it later.

harrygeez 10y ago
This. Most of my friends are like "wtf is your screen so yellow" like every time. I thought Night Shift on iOS will change that but nope. I guess it takes time.
- rukuu001 10y ago
  Sure, I had the "what's up with your screen" comments too. Then I'd turn off flux while they were watching & everybody said the same thing as the screen returned to blue-white: "ewwww."
jordansmithnz 10y ago
Exactly this. Apple is building this feature for the average user. If they presented a screen too different from normal, most people would turn it off, thinking that it looks ugly - precisely the opposite of what they want.
- mrbill 10y ago
  I was working a laaate shift (datacenter migration) at work one night and came back to my desk around 4am.. my screens were straight up dark burnt orange. I thought something was broken, was checking cables, rebooted, etc, until I realized that I'd just never seen what f.lux did at 4 in the morning before. Felt pretty stupid.
  - meric 10y ago

jeron 10y ago

Are the charts for Night Shift on MacOS? The dataset provided at the very bottom is for the iPad Pro...

killjoywashere 10y ago

They are both terrible compared to Quicksilver's little brother, Nocturne. Nocturne can turn a Mac full red monochrome. Coming from the military, it's amazing.

BigJono 10y ago
I remember doing this with f.lux back in the day. Unless they've removed it from the options?
- skuhn 10y ago
  There is a Darkroom mode that is red-on-black.
  - kalleboo 10y ago
    Warning I tried this on my Mac and it's broken for me - it turned the screen completely black and I had to force-shut down the whole computer to get rid of it.
    - mjmj 10y ago
      This beta fixed dark room for me: https://forum.justgetflux.com/topic/3466/f-lux-beta-39-9 https://forum.justgetflux.com/topic/3466/f-lux-beta-39-9
      - kalleboo 10y ago
        Cool, thanks, I'll try it out
copperx 10y ago
Cool, I never knew that Nocturne was developed by the military. Also, do you have a working link for it? Every link I've tried is down.
- 10y ago

russdill 10y ago

Gnome also has a similar feature now, night light http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/02/gnome-night-light-blue-light-filter-linux http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/02/gnome-night-light-blue-li...

orthecreedence 10y ago

Sort of on-topic, I've been using Redshift <https://github.com/jonls/redshift> https://github.com/jonls/redshift> for years and love it (both windows and linux).

nebabyte 10y ago
your link accidentally included the > Also thanks, uninstalled flux due to annoyance at lack of full customizability over schedules and hue ranges. ended up finding a more general 'display output' modifier, I'll look into this one though.
anuragsoni 10y ago
I've used both f.lux and redshift over the years. f.lux worked really well on the mac at work, but I had problems with it on my linux machines. Was using redshift till a few days ago. I recently switched to the "Night Light" that Gnome added as that also works on Wayland (I think f.lux/redshift don't support wayland yet) [1] https://www.gnome.org/news/2017/03/gnome-3-24-released/ https://www.gnome.org/news/2017/03/gnome-3-24-released/
- j_koreth 10y ago
  Actually no program can support Wayland to change color temperatures except for the compositor.
  - NoGravitas 10y ago
    You're right, though the compositor could provide an ipc mechanism to let another program tell it to change color temperatures. Sway (a Wayland compositor/window manager) works with a patched RedShift, and I assume this is how it does it.
    - colemickens 10y ago
      If I understand correctly, they've implemented a new wayland protocol (extension?) https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway/blob/master/protocols/gamma-control.xml https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway/blob/master/protocols/gamma...

psiclops 10y ago

As I have my daytime f.lux setting at 5500k, I don't plan to change over. I prefer to have the blue light reduced slightly all the time

joemaller1 10y ago

My life doesn't necessarily fit into a sunrise-sundown bracketed timeframe. I regularly need to postpone dimming until later in the evening, and then return to full color brightness before dawn. F.lux refuses to do this. Night Shift (at least on iOS) does.

bostonvaulter2 10y ago
You can easily return to full color brightness before dawn with f.lux simple hit the Disable Until Sunrise button.
- hvidgaard 10y ago
  You should be able to plot in your regular schedule, and have that be the default. Having to hit a button every morning and/or evening is just poor usability.
  - asendra 10y ago
    But how will they further the understanding of human biology! [0] [0] - "Our goal is to further the understanding of human biology, not just turn things orange on a timer. It's a longer term undertaking and a much more difficult one." https://forum.justgetflux.com/topic/237/custom-sunset-sunrus.. https://forum.justgetflux.com/topic/237/custom-sunset-sunrus....
kristofferR 10y ago
Yeah, Flux is useless in places far from the equator. I don't want my screen to dim at sunset/6PM.
- qqg3 10y ago
  Why not? Its better for your eyes if you're working in dim rooms.

jluxenberg 10y ago

If you use and love f.lux, consider donating! https://justgetflux.com/promo/paypal.html?ab=8-planet5 https://justgetflux.com/promo/paypal.html?ab=8-planet5

najati83 10y ago
For me to consider donating, they should consider releasing the source code.
andrewshadura 10y ago
Open-source first, donations second.

lmg643 10y ago

I must be out of step with the times as I'm surprised by the favorable comments about Night Shift. For my eyes, the f.lux nighttime adjustment and configurability is great. at work, i use it during daytime hours as well, helps greatly with eye strain. Night Shift is like an introduction of the concept to a mass audience, surely it has a positive benefit for the uninitiated but there's a lot missing for folks who rely on it. Android is much better with multiple applications available to control this. I thought it would have been a good gesture for apple to buy f.lux and get the "market leader", and some built in goodwill, as opposed to just copying them, but I guess such is life when you are the largest corporation in the world.

MBCook 10y ago
If Apple bought f.lux they'd cease all development for all non-Apple platforms and people would FREAK OUT. They wouldn't get any goodwill.
- gurkendoktor 10y ago
  People would freak out over Apple buying f.lux, and then install Redshift.
zeveb 10y ago
> I'm surprised by the favorable comments about Night Shift. Apple made it, which means that Apple's PR shills & Apple's fanboys think it's revolutionary. These are the same folks who proudly claim that wireless headphones are awesome & losing the escape key is great for vi-users. Frankly I think theirs are low-signal comments, but … to each his own, I suppose.

samsamoa 10y ago

Any hints on getting f.lux to work in sync with a Hue bulb on macOS?

lucisferre 10y ago

I love f.lux but I always end up uninstalling it because of how it messes up with games when they are running. Performance tanks and I get tired of switching out and killing f.lux every time.

dhritzkiv 10y ago
It might be annoying to do it for every game you play, but f.lux can be disabled per-app.
Soinou 10y ago
Yeah that's because they insist on refreshing the gamma really fast, and that messes up a lot with games. I had the same problem in the past, and that's why I made my own f.lux where I can just change the refresh interval and set it to change the gamma every one second or something. There's no point in updating it so fast.
sundvor 10y ago
Disable transitions and it won't be a problem. At least it isn't for me, on Nvidia.

lighttower 10y ago

TLDR >To be fair, we thought it was pretty easy after our first year making f.lux (Night Shift today looks a whole lot like our first version). We figured we'd solved the blue light problem and that there just wasn't much left to do. We couldn't have been more wrong. Every person has individual needs, and those needs are different based on your sensitivity to light, your own chronobiology (imagine early birds and night owls), your own schedule, and other factors too. Those needs change across seasons, and over your lifetime. Today our approach is different: we are working every day to understand how light affects human biology, not strictly sleep, and we are constantly applying what we learn to updates and new features for f.lux.

keithkml 10y ago

Pretty sure this is all snake oil — both f.lux and Night Shift. I don't doubt that blue light affects our brains. But I see no evidence that color filter software has any impact. If the issue is the number of blue photons per square millimeter of our retinas, why isn't it being discussed as such? This means screen brightness and distance from your face would have a much bigger impact than a color filter. I personally think the f.lux team knows this and that's why their FAQ is devoid of any questions about effectiveness. FWIW the only person I've known to use f.lux is an insomniac who barely ever sleeps and is always tired.

UnoriginalGuy 10y ago
I cannot say I follow. You acknowledge that blue light does affect our brains and sleep patterns, but then dismiss a solution which limits the amount of blue light while toting an alternative which also acts to reduce the amount of blue light (brightness & distance). Brightness is meant to apply evenly across the entire color spectrum of a display (it doesn't in reality but that is a convenient fiction without getting into the weeds). Color filters on the other hand reduce the luminosity of only blue light which can be independently measured (see the link). I know plenty of people who use f.lux and tons more who use Night Shift on iOS devices. My wife is one of them, wakes up in the middle of the night and uses her phone, goes back to sleep a lot sooner after they added Night Shift than before. Obviously all anecdotes are anecdotes but study after study have shown that blue light negatively impacts sleep, and blue filter glasses have been shown by at least one Harvard study to help aleve the impact.
coldtea 10y ago
>Pretty sure this is all snake oil — both f.lux and Night Shift. I don't doubt that blue light affects our brains. But I see no evidence that color filter software has any impact. A color filter such as in Flux and NS removes blue light. >If the issue is the number of blue photons per square millimeter of our retinas, why isn't it being discussed as such? This means screen brightness and distance from your face would have a much bigger impact than a color filter. No, it doesn't mean that at all. Or rather, it does, but it's a moot point. All you're saying is: you can reduce blue light with an orange filter, but you can also go away from your screen or dim it so you can't see it. Or even not use a computer at all. While all of those things hold, the "orange filter" achieves the same thing (removing blue light) without affecting our ability to work regularly on the computer (increased distance, less brightness, etc). I'm not sure how people come up with such logic errors. >FWIW the only person I've known to use f.lux is an insomniac who barely ever sleeps and is always tired. It's not worth much. It's not supposed to cure insomnia (which has 2000+ different causes), just to keep up with the natural light changes and improve sleep.

metafunctor 10y ago

One thing I find quite annoying about f.lux is that it doesn't just have a simple custom schedule setting. Night Shift has that, and it's great. I live very far north. In the winter the sun is up for just a few hours, and in the summer it's down for just a few. Obviously, I don't want to follow the sun for my sleeping rhythm, and exactly nobody over here does. Most of the time, I go to bed based on the clock. We use lots of artificial lighting in the winter, and window blinds in the summertime. I'd like to simply configure when I expect to go to bed, and possibly when I expect to wake up. With f.lux, I have to try to find a location on the globe where the sun matches my actual sleeping cycle, and hope that it stays that way (it doesn't). I did notice that there's a new "far from the equator" setting in the latest version, but I don't understand what it does and how it's supposed to help. Just give me a schedule setting.

dovdovdov 10y ago
well, the only thing I find quite annoying about f.lux is this butthurt brag we see every now and then. It's a nice tool, but their communication is slightly unprofessional.
- sarreph 10y ago
  To be honest, I'm not going to hold a "butthurt" brag here-and-there against them. They've offered a revolutionary — one that can improve people's HEALTH° — software product at no cost to the consumer. The moment said product reaches peak market interest, one of the biggest companies in the world comes along and snatches it from them. (Disclosure: I don't know if there was a bid made, in which case my argument is weakened.) So much for "Good artists copy, great artists steal"[0], eh... If you were the 'great artist' in this situation, I don't think you'd sit there without letting off a bit of steam via technically correct public information as to how your product is objectively better (at what it's supposed to do). °How many software utility companies can say that?! [0] - https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso
  - angry-hacker 10y ago

dayaz36 10y ago

How does f.lux make money?

int_19h 10y ago

Does anyone have a good suggestion for an Android app that does blue filtering, and: 1. Doesn't require root. 2. Actually filters blue out, instead of adding red (i.e. a pure black screen should remain pure black). The built-in feature in Nougat previews was great, until they removed it...

mappu 10y ago
The built-in LiveDisplay feature in LineageOS can do this without root.
- int_19h 10y ago
  Sorry, I forgot to specify stock Android as well.
EpicBlackCrayon 10y ago
Twilight?
- int_19h 10y ago
  It doesn't pass #2 - the black areas of the screen are visibly red. Every application that I've tried so far does this, which leads me to believe that it is an inherent limitation in stock Android APIs (which also explains why apps that require root can work around that limitation).
  - rym_ 10y ago
    Latest release on my Galaxy S7 supports this, but it's built-in and would like to be able to set it a bit more extreme than it allows.
laxentasken 10y ago
I guess twilight is out of the question? Outstanding app imo.
GranPC 10y ago

nice_byte 10y ago

I've no idea why people use this type of software. I tried it a couple times, and it just annoys the hell out of me. It makes the colors on my monitor all kinds of messed up, and doesn't have any positive effect whatsoever on the tiredness of my eyes. If anything, the effect is negative: the messed up color makes text hard to read.

flurdy 10y ago
Try to customise the strength to only a slight change for sunset and bedtime. So hardly any colour distortion, mostly just less bright. And enable the slow transition. Use that for a few days to make sure you no longer notice it. Then one late evening disable it. Every time I do that it as if I have been hit with full beam car light. Really shocks me how bright a non f.lux/night shift/redshift screen is without them. I now really struggle to look at a non-adjusted screen in the evenings. And I am glad my eyes don't have that strain normally. I could possibly deal without it on a small laptop screen by just dimming it but need these tools when using my normal home 34" monitor. That is a lot of brightness otherwise.

jfoldager 10y ago

There is already lots of blue light in my room, when I use a computer at night. I don't see how it would help to remove all the blue light from the screen, when the room is still bathed in it. I use quite warm light, and have it even warmer in the evening, but still, the standard settings for Night Shift looks very orange to my eyes. I would love if Night Shift could just shift the white balance to match the surrounding. Does anyone have experience with True Tone on the 9.7-inch iPad Pro? I imagine would work like that.

michelb 10y ago

I'd say a big plus of f.lux is that it works on my 2009 mac pro and 2011 macbook pro, while Night Shift does not.

ClassyJacket 10y ago

Night Shift lets you set a custom schedule. Somehow, insanely, Flux does not. It's the only thing I want, so Night Shift automatically wins. I don't know why they're so stubborn on that issue, I would've even paid a few bucks for a "premium" version with that feature, but now Apple is eating their lunch. Bye forever, Flux.

aithoughts 10y ago
Setting your wake-up time isn't enough? I am new to Flux but unless they introduced this feature in the last 6 days, I don't understand your critique.

DCKing 10y ago

When it comes to blue light filtering, all I want is something with good defaults (for me) that works unobtrusively. My first days of using Night Shift has worked exactly like that. I don't particularly care about configurability of the tool (I live on a pretty well supported latitude I guess). Moreover Night Shift presents significantly less artifacting in videos based on my brief experience. Transitions are also far less jarring than they are with f.lux. So yeah, I guess f.lux will be the better choice for those who really care about the details of their blue light filter. Night Shift, like LineageOS' LiveDisplay, Windows' Night Time and GNOME's Night Light, take a simpler approach that will get you 98% of the way there in a few clicks, which should be good enough for most people.

jamesgeck0 10y ago
The issue pointed out by the herf is that what is unobtrusive is not a good default, because it doesn't actually work. You have to eliminate lot of blue light to get any benefit. Night Shift's defaults aren't getting you 98% of the way there; they're getting you maybe 15% of the way there.

Udo_Schmitz 10y ago

I tried f.lux on the Mac and was very disappointed with the results. To me it looked like a red film overlaid on the screen. Distracting and ugly. Night Shift on iOS looks much more natural.

kartickv 10y ago

How does Night Shift's reddest setting compare with Flux?

dcdevito 10y ago

Why is this on HN's front page? Dumb

philliphaydon 10y ago

Are there any scientific claims to blue light? Or real studies? I tried using flux for a month and ended up with sore eyes which I don't get when I don't use flux. So I don't know if this blue thing is a legit thing or not. My flat mate says he sleeps better. But I just get sore eyes.

FrozenVoid 10y ago

I've just turned the blue/magenta/cyan sliders in monitor controls to 0%(Blue components in images appear as black/grey pixels). Blue light damages the retina and messes up circadian cycles: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4734149/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4734149/

rocky1138 10y ago

"Our circadian system is actually not reacting to small changes in "color". Instead, it is mostly reacting to the "amount" of light. Our eyes are extremely good at distinguishing little shades of color from each other, but this is a different system than the one that drives circadian rhythms." Is there any data to support this?

kortex 10y ago
One of the primary drivers of melatonin suppression is the IPRGC [1]. So yes, what seems to be more important than the perceived color is the intensity of light in the 460-480 nm range. Which, if the spectral data in the original post are correct, means that NightShift has a major disadvantage. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsically_photosensitive_retinal_ganglion_cells https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsically_photosensitive_r...]

owenversteeg 10y ago

I've found something pretty interesting myself when using redshift. If I set the display directly to 3000K or so, it looks really weird. Same if I fade from 6700->3000K. But if I set it to 1000K and then to 3000K, it looks fine. Anybody else do this to "prepare" themselves?

AJ007 10y ago

For all of the squabbles between Night Shift and f.lux, both are doing a great job compared to what we had before. I am sure they will both continue to improve and become standard in all platforms I am a lot more concerned about street lights, which are headed in the exact wrong direction: https://www.ama-assn.org/ama-adopts-guidance-reduce-harm-high-intensity-street-lights https://www.ama-assn.org/ama-adopts-guidance-reduce-harm-hig...

craigc 10y ago

It seems like the replies here are very much in defense of Apple which I am not surprised about, but I do not really consider it to be warranted. I have been using f.lux for years and it has definitely had a huge impact on me. I don't have any scientific data to back up my claims, but f.lux is a fantastic product. When you consider that f.lux released a side loading version of their app on iOS and then Apple threatened to remove their developer license, and then after it was pulled, released their own ripped off version of the software that does not work as well, you can understand how they might be upset about that. I understand that is business, but as someone who has used both I find f.lux to be completely superior. Apple probably should have bought f.lux and then integrated it into their products, but instead decided to do it themselves. I'm not saying the software is earth shattering, but they spent years on the problem, and it feels as if Apple implemented their version in a few days. I think Apple should open up the screen/display APIs on iOS to allow f.lux and other similar apps to be installed. I would happily pay for it rather than use night shift.

g0atbutt 10y ago
The reason f.lux sideloaded app got pulled is because they didn't release their source code. Instead, f.lux relied on loading/patching a binary that bypassed some of iOS security features and could load unsigned binarys (read: it could then run pirated apps).
- dota_fanatic 10y ago
  This order of operations is incorrect, though the grandparent set you up a bit by saying "released on iOS". In order to install the f.lux app you would first need to be jailbroken, ie able to run pirated apps.
  - damnfinecoffee 10y ago
    Not true, f.lux released a version of their app in the App Store. Apple pulled their app and so they added another method to sideload it https://justgetflux.com/sideload/ https://justgetflux.com/sideload/ using xcode. Apple then revoked their development license which broke that method as well. It's always been available as a jailbreak tweak but it's also been available to the general, non-jailbroken public

jaxn 10y ago

Windows 10 has a similar feature called Night Light. I have it set to Sunset/Sunrise. The $49 Kindle Fire has a similar feature. I appreciate the work f.lux did, but this is going to be a core feature of every OS now, and none of them bought their tech to do it. That is a tough spot to be in, but it is probably time to start winding the project down.

kalleboo 10y ago
I just wonder if they're waiting for some patent to be granted to strike...

turrini 10y ago

Or you can go to astronomy mode (linux): xcalib -green .1 0 1 -alter xcalib -blue .1 0 1 -alter

nimish 10y ago

I noticed a massive battery life improvement after removing f.lux and using night shift/night light on mac and windows. Far less stuttering as well. Whatever f.lux is doing is not worth the janky implementation.

sanguy 10y ago

I loved f.lux, but now I don't need it. Just like many other utilities before the good ones eventually get adopted as base functionality. They should have sold it when they could have....

jorvi 10y ago

Night Shift: > Doesn't apply to projectors or TVs > Doesn't mess with fluidity (turning Flux on or off gives massive framedrops > Doesn't give weird artefacts on YouTube Flux devs also ignored all (!) my e-mails about fixing how Flux reads its settings. You can directly edit the settings file via Terminal, but Flux ignores all the values you set and simply sticks to the ones set in the app itself.. even after a restart of the app or a reboot.

homakov 10y ago

I'm very sensitive to blue light and been using flux for few years. After trying nigth shift for few days I'm back to flux which actually works