12 ms·

f.lux

486 points by graderjs 5y ago

DenGorbachev 5y ago
In addition to f.lux, I've enabled "Grayscale" color filters. Less distraction + easier for the eyes. Here's how to enable them on Mac: * Open Preferences * Search for "color filters" * Check "Enable color filters" * Select "Grayscale"
SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
I guess now that this is built into many OSs by default is the connection with other smart devices?
- nicoburns 5y ago
  It is built in, but at the least the Apple implementation isn't very good. It doesn't go red enough to completely eliminate the waking effect.
  - dainiusse 5y ago
    Yep. And I hate how apple limits lowest brightness level on iOS devices. I used to jailbreak only to have better screen brightness management...
    - nicoburns 5y ago
      There is an accessibility setting to lower it further (which you can assign to triple home button click). But generally I agree.
      - dainiusse 5y ago
        Thank you! I didn't know that. Not ideal, but still solved my problem
- 0x6c6f6c 5y ago
  If I remember correctly, f.lux had an iOS app but they got removed from the store just prior to Apple announcing their own support for the same feature. They do have an Android app as well as desktop apps. f.lux has been in the space for years and years now.
  - SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
    Yeah, I remember downloading this many years ago, but I know for Android and Windows you don't need it anymore.
  - jeromegv 5y ago
    flux had an iOS app, but it was always side-loading through Xcode (or for jailbroken) but never on the actual iOS App Store. They need to use private APIs so it was never authorized in the first place.
    - phoenix3200 5y ago
      If I recall correctly, they started with doing a screen overlay, and migrated to using the hardware gamma tables (I think I might have pointed them to it?). Android apps that do screen dimming use overlays, which ends up causing flickering. http://thebigboss.org/dimmer-quit-blinding-yourself http://thebigboss.org/dimmer-quit-blinding-yourself
eminence32 5y ago
I've used flux, or something like it for at least 10 years (these days, most operating systems have this feature built-in and don't require a 3rd party app). My eyes and brain rather like it, though I did have a friend visit me recently and he instantly commented "why is your screen so red?". I was surprised that the change of color was that noticeable to the un-accustomed eye. A quick specific complaint (in hopes of learning about workarounds): The implementation on Windows (known as "Night light") seems particularly bad: Sometimes it won't turn on at the expected time, or sometimes it will only apply on 1 monitor but not the other. Has anyone else seen this? Any hints to make it more reliable?
- alisonatwork 5y ago
  Yeah, the Windows implementation is annoyingly buggy. I've found the best way to force it on (or off) without going into the settings and toggling it again is to kill explorer.exe via Task Manager - when it restarts then the night light will apply properly again. I have my suspicions the reason why it doesn't work consistently has something to do with power savings or hardware profiles or something, but i haven't been able to reproduce it consistently enough to open a bug report.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  > I was surprised that the change of color was that noticeable to the un-accustomed eye. You should turn it off once late a night, your retinas will hate you for it :D
  - eminence32 5y ago
    Oh, I've tried this and they certainly do :) But if I step away from my computer at night for an hour, and then go back to it, nothing appears unusual or jarring when I return
securingsincity 5y ago
I'm sure it was a mix of things (stress etc) but in 2013, I was regularly working late and my eye started to twitch. I remember downloading f.lux and a lot of eye strain and the eye twitch going away in a few days. Who knows if blue light was the culprit, but I've enjoyed f.lux ever since
ModernMech 5y ago
All the operating systems tried to copy flux, but they can't get it right. On mac with night shift, the colors are never warm enough. On windows with night light they tried progressive reddening but it happens over a matter of minutes rather than hours and isn't configurable. Also it's buggy with turning off. Flux has been resilient in being featureful through the years and has survived being obviated by operating systems including its basic functionality.
- qalmakka 5y ago
  Sadly, it can't survive the transition to Wayland, given that applying filters on the entire screen is something only the compositor can do and thus it must be handled at that level and not in a separate app, like f.lux did on X11.
kareemm 5y ago
Been a f.lux user for (I want to say) more than a decade. No idea if it actually helps me wind down at night and sleep better, but: 1. When the screen color changes at sunset it's a subtle but powerful cue to know that the work day is coming to a close. And then if I'm on my computer when it changes around bedtime that's a cue to GTF off the computer. 2. All the science I've read suggests removing blue light in the evenings does indeed help with sleep. So why not use it?
- arethuza 5y ago
  I'd actually quite like something that gave a subtle indication that "the work day is coming to a close"... I've used f.lux for a long time, but it kicks in in the middle of the afternoon in winter and probably about bedtime in summer!
  - TorKlingberg 5y ago
    I changed the location in f.lux to somewhere south-west of where I am. Yes it gets dark at 3pm in Sweden in winter. That doesn't mean it's anywhere near bedtime.
  - jseban 5y ago
    Use os x built in night shift feature, there you can set the schedule.
- kitkat_new 5y ago
  Well, all studies? https://time.com/5752454/blue-light-sleep/ https://time.com/5752454/blue-light-sleep/ https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/blue-light-filter-smartphone-night-shift-sleep-study/ https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/blue-light-filter-smar... https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191216173654.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191216173654.h...
  - kareemm 5y ago
    I stand corrected. Thanks!
dr-detroit 5y ago
Jamie9912 5y ago
I've just realised i've been using flux for about 10 years now also, and never gave them a penny. I've just donated $25 - https://justgetflux.com/windows/contribute.html https://justgetflux.com/windows/contribute.html
- ndr 5y ago
  Thank you for the prompt, I just did the same.
- knowald 5y ago
  Hah, you just made me realise how many years I've been using it and recommending it as a life changing thing to everyone, every time i see a cool screen in the evening. Just said "thanks" to them with the same.
- orzig 5y ago
  Thanks for the nudge (public philanthropy has positive externalities!) I just did the same, and my day is better for it
- iKlsR 5y ago
  Over 10 years and the same. I literally cannot use computers or any device without a warm filter. The builtin "night lights" in OSes don't work as well and are wonky. Fantastic software.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  On Mac, this redirects you to the Paypal link https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/justgetflux/10 https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/justgetflux/10 with $10 prefilled but unable to edit. Change the integer param to donate the desired amount. (donated)
- lukka5 5y ago
  donated $10 as well. My eyes were being taken care by their software for many years
pluc 5y ago
There's also Redshift that was inspired by f.lux which may work better for some (and has a nice gtk tray client): http://jonls.dk/redshift/ http://jonls.dk/redshift/
- asicsp 5y ago
  I use redshift (haven't tried f.lux) and works great. I use a constant 3000K temperature instead of location/time based changes.
  - pluc 5y ago
    My experience is Redshift works better on Linux whereas f.lux works better (or "is more elegantly integrated") on OSX
- forgotpwd16 5y ago
  I've used redshift since ever but didn't knew f.lux had a Linux version. Though nowadays GNOME and Plasma offer built-in functionality for this, it is still needed for those of us preferring a window manager (and gammastep for Wayland users).
corndoge 5y ago
See also redshift, gammastep https://github.com/jonls/redshift https://github.com/jonls/redshift https://gitlab.com/chinstrap/gammastep https://gitlab.com/chinstrap/gammastep
reportgunner 5y ago
I use this feature on my phone to let me know that it's too late to browse and I should go to sleep. Seeing this post on HN i realized i don't notice it turning on anymore for months, I doubt it's doing anything if all your apps support dark mode.
rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
I've used f.lux for years until I enabled dark mode at the OS level and in the apps settings for those that require it. More importantly installed the Dark Reader extension (https://darkreader.org https://darkreader.org). This one is incredible: it's much nicer to browser the Web in dark mode than to make page reddish. I now enable Dark Reader at all time (day and night) and can't stand the screen of my coworkers (so dazzling). Idem for my Android device. The only app/webpage I don' apply dark mode/reader to is Google Maps. For now…
- boringg 5y ago
  Just installed this on your recommendation. I felt my eyes relax as the screen changed colors. I'm hoping this is a long term add. Thanks!
- seanw444 5y ago
  Same here. I can't use the web without Dark Reader anymore. It's not like other dark mode extensions that just apply a generic "make everything this much darker" filter. It seems to take a lot more into account when it's rendering the page. It usually looks pretty nice. Almost like a native dark mode. Sometimes it leaves black-on-dark for icons and such, but that's negligible, and definitely a good trade-off to my eyes being drained. Side note: Maps is surprisingly good with Dark Reader!
- diarrhea 5y ago
  That, and for Safari on iOS I bought Noir. Works like a charm and cannot miss it. Noir and automatic reader mode is actually a pleasant way to browse the web (although I often disable reader mode because it gobbles up images etc.).
  - artificial 5y ago
    Have you kicked Hyperweb’s tires? Not sure how much functionality you need, happy customer.
    - diarrhea 5y ago
MikusR 5y ago
I tried f.lux on multiple computers and every time it completely messed brightness/colors. Only fix being a full reinstall.
namlem 5y ago
I used to use f.lux but it had such poor configurability. Is it better now? I switched to SunsetScreen a while back which worked much better, but then eventually started using the built-in Windows blue light filter even though it is less powerful than SunsetScreen simply because it's less hassle.
zthrowaway 5y ago
Flux is amazing, and a life saver for eye strain. Way better than Apple’s attempt at warm display settings.
LoveMortuus 5y ago
I used to use f.lux on Win7 but since moving to Win10 I've been using the built-in one. Am I perhaps missing any cool features?
spicybright 5y ago
I used to actually keep flux at it's dimmest setting 24/7 during work. Drove my coworkers crazy when they had to look at my screen.
politelemon 5y ago
It is possible to apply f.lux to HN's top bar by setting the topcolor to ffeee3
tough 5y ago
Flux is awesome, There's also lunar.fyi https://lunar.fyi/ https://lunar.fyi/
- alin23 5y ago
  Lunar developer here. Thanks for mentioning it! Just a note to avoid confusion: Lunar serves a completely different purpose than f.lux. f.lux changes the colour temperature by altering the Gamma tables. Lunar's main function is controlling the hardware brightness/contrast/volume/input/colors of external monitors using DDC and private macOS methods. macOS also has a native approach to f.lux called Night Shift. I use it with Shifty (https://shifty.natethompson.io https://shifty.natethompson.io) to get the same featureset as f.lux.
ZeroCool2u 5y ago
While it’s not strictly necessary anymore, because most OS’s have at least a basic feature that mimics flux built in now, I feel like we owe the devs a huge debt for forcing the conversation about the toll our ultra high brightness screens have on our sleep patterns and quality and our eyes. Plus, it’s a great example of a really high quality piece of software developed with a lot of care and a huge long term commitment.
- int_19h 5y ago
  The problem with OS-provided facilities for this is that they often don't give you enough control. I still use f.lux on an Android phone that I rooted specifically for this purpose, because that's the only way I can get dark red on black text in Kindle (for night reading).
  - dp-hackernews 5y ago
    I used to use f.lux on Android until I found "Twilight" https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.urbandroid.lux https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.urbandroid... I also used to use f.lux on Linux until i found "Redshift" http://jonls.dk/redshift/ http://jonls.dk/redshift/
    - int_19h 5y ago
      Twilight doesn't do the same thing. It, and all other screen filters on Android that do not require root, can only add color, not subtract it. Thus, it cannot make white text on black background into red text on black background - it can only make it into pink text on red background.
- gjvc 5y ago
  Amen to that -- f.lux was a revelation to me. Donated.
- neal_jones 5y ago
  Agreed. I learned about it while at a coding bootcamp when I felt like my eyes were going to break. Total game changer for me.
smoyer 5y ago
I was a happy f.lux user for several years and suddenly had a new (Xubuntu) machine which seemed to override it's settings. Redshift is "built-in" to Xubuntu and I find it to be equivalent for my needs.
qalmakka 5y ago
KDE Plasma has included a builtin feature very similar to f.lux/redshift for a while, which works fine on Wayland. I've been using it constantly for the last 2, 3 years (I think?) and it does its job all right.
- pluc 5y ago
  Android also has "night light" since like Android 6
- alias_neo 5y ago
  As does Gnome. I haven't had to use f.lux for many years now because it's built in to every platform I use (KDE, Gnome and Android).
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
branon 5y ago
The original! Very nice program. Nowadays I mainly use Red Moon on Android, and GNOME 3's built-in "Night Light" feature on desktop. I don't use Windows much anymore, but when I do, I run f.lux there.
- Markoff 5y ago
  I remember I tried Red Moon but it must have had some issue (either bright installation, or bright status bar or something else) because I end yp using "Screen Dimmer (dims notifications too)" from etsang, which is also open source and can recommend, works fine, everything dark plus has very good notificationto easily in steps brighten/darker your screen without going somewhere deep in settings I remember there was some widely popular screen dimmer, which didn't even let you manually change setting and relied on location provided by google services which I don't have, not sure if it's not f.lux because it ws one of the most famous options
prometheus76 5y ago
Besides turning my screen more amber at night, the main feature I use f.lux for is matching my ambient office light. I downloaded an app that measures color temperature and took a picture of a white piece of paper with my phone. My particular ambient light temperature is 4200K because of the fluorescent lights they use in my office. I set my monitor to match that, and it has helped my eyestrain and headaches considerably. The other thing I did to eliminate eyestrain was to get a pair of +1.00 reading glasses, because my eyes are just starting to get a little blurry.
- MrWiffles 5y ago
  Thank you for mentioning this! I've been experiencing eyestrain and eye pain far more than usual lately and was wondering if there was anything out there I could use to help me figure out what was going on, or at least adapt, beyond glasses (which I now have). I didn't know flux could do this, so thank you!
daneel_w 5y ago
I've used f.lux for more than 12 years now. My preference is 3700K after sunset, and 2600K during the last few hours before bedtime - rather warm color temperatures - and it has definitely improved my ability to wind down before bedtime.
samatman 5y ago
Flux and the various other approaches are a fine way to re-grade the colors of a monitor to be more comfortable. By which I mean, if someone likes to use f.lux in the evening, they find the result more subjectively comfortable or pleasing, it's a great app. I encourage people who are looking to solve sleep problems to not use any backlit screens in the several hours before sleeping. Such evidence as there is on the subject doesn't suggest that redshifting the screen is sufficient. If you've seen someone using a laptop or phone in a dark room, it's quite clear that they're blasting themselves with a flashlight. Filtering some of the blue out isn't going to repair this basic dynamic.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  I think the idea is that with a blue light filter on (and your brightness turned down) it's more like candlelight, which doesn't really disrupt sleep.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  Yeah, I’ve always found the assumption that f.lux actually redshifted the screen the same way their cited experiments did to be on shaky ground. I don’t recall seeing any studies that directly used f.lux, just studies with blue lightboxes, and that stuck out to me as odd. Monitors, even modern ones, don’t 100% convert their backlights (which are white) to the displayed color, so you always have an amount of washout, and I was always curious if that spoiled the effect, among other unique quirks of computer monitors.
Markoff 5y ago
never used, tried to make it working on Android, but had some issues, was satisfied for years with Darker (Screen Filter) from mlhgdevelopment before I swtiched to Screen Dimmer (dims notifications too) from etsang which I use to these days
janandonly 5y ago
The toll on "sleep quality" has been debunked [1]. The original research only found ANY connection between screen usage in the evening and sleep in Teens. And no separate connection to Blue light or any other colour... [1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191216173654.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191216173654.h...
- kmlx 5y ago
  > According to the team, using dim, cooler, lights in the evening and bright warmer lights in the day may be more beneficial to our health. so it's actually the opposite to the current common belief. it should be blue at night, warm during the day :)
- Karawebnetwork 5y ago
  "Contrary to common belief, blue light may not be as disruptive to our sleep patterns as originally thought" Emphasis on "may". "Our findings suggest that using dim, cooler, lights in the evening and bright warmer lights in the day may be more beneficial." Emphasis on "suggests". Also, the study's title itself. "Cones Support Alignment to an Inconsistent World by Suppressing Mouse Circadian Responses to the Blue Colors Associated with Twilight." Emphasis on "mouse". Science oozes back and forth. You should not strongly interpret individual studies. Debunked is a strong word here.
  - mynameisvlad 5y ago
    I mean, the same can be said about your comment. You’re strongly interpreting the results the other way (ie by trying to discredit them implicitly). The current study has has not found links between cool light at night and sleep patterns. That may change in the future, sure, but current science suggests said theory is debunked (and I’m not afraid to use that word).
    - janto 5y ago
      Wondering if you would you say that the proposition has been falsified? Because debunked means falsified.
dwighttk 5y ago
Weird I’ve used computers for years without f.lux and haven’t noticed any eye strain symptoms or sleep issues. I also got some blue blocking coating for my eye glasses last time because it was on a big discount and can’t tell the difference (symptom-wise… I can see the included blue laser is mostly stopped and things look slightly yellower) compared to my old glasses.
janandonly 5y ago
So, this app does what an iPhone/iPad/MacBook does out of the box: True Tone [1] [1] https://www.imore.com/why-you-should-use-true-tone-your-iphone-or-ipad https://www.imore.com/why-you-should-use-true-tone-your-ipho...
- h4waii 5y ago
  Except it's been doing it for over a decade before Apple did.
- alin23 5y ago
  The macOS equivalent is actually Night Shift, not True Tone. And f.lux was among the first apps to do this cross-platform. Night Shift was developed much later.
  - alpb 5y ago
    I don't know if it's fixed but "Flux developer says Apple’s new competitive macOS Night Shift feature falls short" https://9to5mac.com/2017/03/28/flux-developer-says-apples-new-competitive-macos-night-shift-feature-falls-short/ https://9to5mac.com/2017/03/28/flux-developer-says-apples-ne...
    - alin23 5y ago
      It works better than f.lux for me, because it works at a lower level than Gamma table manipulation. I’ve been using Night Shift ever since it was released and I like its color rendering more than f.lux. But it’s subjective, some people like the extreme warmth of f.lux more. It depends on how you perceive colors and how well you can adjust to warmer colors. Shifty is also a very nice addition if you want more control over Night Shift: https://shifty.natethompson.io https://shifty.natethompson.io
herf 5y ago
Thank you to this community for all the support through the years! We're spending a lot of our time on basic research and sensing, and we have a few small updates planned for f.lux, too. The main challenge as we learn more about the biology is to keep things simple enough--it's easy to make things complicated, and it's pretty hard (for me) to distill them to something that makes sense to most people. Also, if you care about how your eyes and circadian system work, don't forget about all the light from outside your screen too.
- Andi 5y ago
  I'm using this now for years on my Mac, and due to the great configurability I prefer it to the builtin mode. Thank you!
- dncornholio 5y ago
  > don't forget about all the light from outside your screen too Time for you to make us some great sunglasses :) or curtains..
  - teekert 5y ago
    More like ultra-bright leds :)
  - aasasd 5y ago
    Just in case: there are yellow glasses marketed specifically for use at the computer and for avoidance of blue light. (This is not an endorsement, however.)
    - lukka5 5y ago
      does someone have any idea if they really have the same effect than f.lux?
      - aasasd 5y ago
        They work pretty much the same way, so I think there shouldn't be a difference in regard to computer screens. As for the surroundings—I toyed with cycling glasses for a bit, which for some reason had amber-yellow plastic, and personally I prefer to just have yellow ‘evening’ lights in the rooms. With cycling glasses, I had more of relaxing effect due to them keeping moisture on my eyes, instead of it being burned away by the winter heating.
tarique313 5y ago
No longer working with Linux Mint and some versions of Ubuntu.
hexo 5y ago
I always found ridiculous what it does to colors, to the point I always ask folks to turn it off when they try to show me their screen. My monitor has "paper" mode, which removes a lot of blue and makes the picture greenish - something I found way more pleasing than f.lux redness.
boomboomsubban 5y ago
I used to be a big fan of f.lux, then I just stopped using it and never felt the need to go back. My eyes never got any more sore and my sleep didn't suffer. I started to wonder how much of it was the placebo effect, the initial change is certainly noticeable but the benefits are hard to actually quantify for yourself.
- skocznymroczny 5y ago
  I think there is some placebo effect to it. I often see people saying "use f.lux for a while, then try to disable it to see how blinding your normal screen used to be"... but that's because it changes suddenly. If you enable f.lux suddenly without a smooth transition then the screen also looks reddish and weird.
seumars 5y ago
If you're on macOS I would also recommend Black Light [https://michelf.ca/projects/black-light/ https://michelf.ca/projects/black-light/] which lets you add all kinds of color filters to individual (or all) screens.
jader201 5y ago
Many MacOS users (and some Windows users) may not know this, but f.lux supports auto-adjusting the color/brightness of Hue bulbs [1], so that your home lights also match your screen. I installed Hue bulbs in my home office for this reason, which keeps my lights at a nice energizing color during the day, then warms up during sunset (especially useful during the winter Standard time). Unfortunately I’m not aware of similar support for MacOS at this time, but maybe others know of options there. [1] https://justgetflux.com/lighting/ https://justgetflux.com/lighting/
- andrewcarter 5y ago
  The Home app now supports a dynamic color option by default which changes based on the sun / lighting in your condition. Seems to work- I think it showed up for me about a year ago or so, so it's pretty new.
- rroarke 5y ago
  Would be cool to get this on linux so you can set it up on a raspberry pi or something similar.
  - zimmund 5y ago
    You can use redshift[1] on linux, and there are a lot of cli tools that can be used to easily script color changes in hue lights and others via cron. It's not as integrated as f.lux, but reasonably easy to get working. There's also redshift-gtk to contorl redshift from the systray. [1]: http://jonls.dk/redshift/ http://jonls.dk/redshift/
  - beaugunderson 5y ago
    here's the script I used to control my Hue lights on a similar curve to f.lux from Linux: https://github.com/beaugunderson/sleep-lights https://github.com/beaugunderson/sleep-lights
- Lramseyer 5y ago
  I used it a few years back, but for me the color temperatures never scaled right. I like my lights at 4500-5500K during the day, but it looks a little too warm on my monitor (f.lux defaults daylight to 6500K.) Maybe it's my lights/monitor, but I really wish I could set different curves, or at least different color temperature targets for my lights and monitor. f.lux didn't allow me to do that. It only gives options for "warmer" and "a lot warmer," which both look weird at night. I ultimately hacked something else together, but it was a little disappointing, because I really like f.lux.
shaicoleman 5y ago
If you're using an external monitor, it's better to do it on the monitor itself rather than in software. When you do it on the monitor it applies everywhere, even when rebooting or using another OS. When I did it in software (redshift) I noticed it was causing my laptop to overheat. Here's how I do it on Linux with a Dell U2720Q monitor. sudo apt-get -yy install ddcutil # Install ddcutil on Ubuntu sudo modprobe i2c_dev # Load required kernel module # Night - Set brightness to 20% and color temperature to 3000K sudo ddcutil setvcp 10 20 sudo ddcutil setvcp 1a 43 sudo ddcutil setvcp 18 69 sudo ddcutil setvcp 16 100 # Daytime - Set brightness to 50% and color temperature to 6500K sudo ddcutil setvcp 10 50 sudo ddcutil setvcp 1a 100 sudo ddcutil setvcp 18 100 sudo ddcutil setvcp 16 100
- jamal-kumar 5y ago
  Ditto for my laptop, the software approach is just a bit untenable when I do work with graphics or design especially because you need consistency in these cases. Personally, I just hit the brightness down button on my keyboard a few times around 8pm. I think windows has this as a built in feature now, too? I'm curious to know what f.lux offers over this: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/set-your-display-for-night-time-in-windows-18fe903a-e0a1-8326-4c68-fd23d7aaf136 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/set-your-display...
  - forgotpwd16 5y ago
    First thing I see is f.lux lets you configure the transition (speed/intensity) between day/night modes as well as color temperatures rather having an abstract "strength" setting.
  - pewu 5y ago
    One feature missing from the Windows solution, which flux has and it works tremendously, is an automatic trigger to disable the color/brightness change when a certain app is opened. Works beautifully when I'm up to do some Lightroom work.
- kelvie 5y ago
  Funnily enough I built a tool that does the same for my gigabyte monitor: https://github.com/kelvie/gbmonctl https://github.com/kelvie/gbmonctl Along with some systemd scripts to toggle it for sunruse/sunset, with another simple tool: https://github.com/kelvie/sunrise-monitor https://github.com/kelvie/sunrise-monitor I really wish there was a common (XDG?) interface for monitor brightness so that e.g. Plasma/KDE can hook into this with their sunrise/sunset settings.
thrdbndndn 5y ago
Just curious, do anyone not use this or similar functionality nowadays (in tech)? I use them on my phone (which is the default and I didn't bother to change), but never get used to them on computer screens. I'm pretty sure if I give it more time I can quickly get used to, but just didn't see the appeal enough. I do have a yellow light in my room. But then again I don't use dark mode either, so maybe I'm just a weirdo.
- bitshiffed 5y ago
  I don't use them on any devices. I don't ever want to look at my screen through a filter, or have colors distorted, any more than is unavoidable. If my eyes need a break, I'll take an actual break from the screen, rather than look at something distorted. I also only use daylight bulbs in my house. "Soft white"/yellow bulbs give things a creepy feeling for me.
- Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
  I don't use it at all. I sit in front of my computer monitor a minimum of 12 hours/day and don't have any problems with eye strain or sleeping. I wonder if the people that like f.lux are also the same people that claim that light themes are blinding, because I'm of the opinion that if you find a completely white screen is blinding, then either your brightness is too high or you don't have enough ambient light in the room.
- layer8 5y ago
  Same here. I used f.lux for a while, but the screen always got too dark/too reddish (on all but the lowest settings), straining my eyes and hurting my concentration. In my experience it‘s sufficient to adjust the display brightness to roughly match the ambient lighting; no need for blue-light filtering.
AlwaysRock 5y ago
I've used flux for years. It is great. As someone with mild to bad sleep issues this really helps. It's also a visual cue for me. Oh shit my screen is yellowish. Time to get off the computer and wind down.
sys_64738 5y ago
Built into most OS variants nowadays. Time moves on.
ajolly 5y ago
Now if I could just get flux on my TV! I've seen some devices that will do it but they don't seem 4K compatible
40four 5y ago
I’ve been using flux and the like for a few years now roughly. Personally, I’ve never had a problem with eye strain/ fatigue, or falling asleep. I just figured ‘Why not? It can’t hurt.” I often wonder though is it really having any effect? I can’t tell any perceivable difference. I know many others claim otherwise, but that’s just my experience. The science is not really clear, it’s definitely controversial. Truthfully, I suspect the amount of blue light from our screens is actually much more negligible that we tend to estimate. Unpopular opinion alert, but I don’t think filtering blue light at the screen level, or those glasses they sell really does much of anything. I think it’s more likely the placebo effect is in play here.
davidhyde 5y ago
I believe that it is the intensity rather than the colour temperature of light that keeps you awake at night. The reason that red shifting the light works is that our eyes are more sensitive to the greener part of the spectrum (shifting towards red) and therefore you need a lot more blue light to see the same detail as you would for green or red light. If you have an e-reader that only emits bluish light like a kindle paperwhite then you can turn down the light intensity and increase the font size to compensate for lost of detail sensitivity.
avipars 5y ago
had it for a while, then microsoft, apple , and google all made their own versions of night light
vermaden 5y ago
There is also REDSHIFT and SCTD for this purpose: - https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2018/06/28/freebsd-desktop-part-11-key-components-blue-light-spectrum-suppress/ https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2018/06/28/freebsd-desktop-pa...
txsoftwaredev 5y ago
Just wanted to say I've been using f.lux for a while now and find it a required install on my mac. Thanks!
sleightofmind 5y ago
It has an interesting EULA.
agilob 5y ago
I'm so glad I don't need to remember to install such things and a colour temperature control is now built-in in Gnome and KDE
lanius 5y ago
My previous monitor, even at minimum brightness with flux enabled, was still uncomfortable to view at night. I finally invested in a monitor with low minimum brightness (~0.5 nits) and couldn't be happier.
nhumrich 5y ago
Anyone know how this differs from twilight?
joveian 5y ago
I used f.lux (well, mostly redshift) for a while. After reading some doubts about blue light being particularly harmful I switched to only dimming brightness and found that I can dim more without shifting colors and I prefer that to shifting colors (partly because I have a non-24 hour circadian rhythm and am often awake at night, so I would often mostly see the shifted colors). So I would recommend giving that a try before shifting colors or try both ways and see what works best for you. Redshift can easily just change brightness but f.lux doesn't have an option to just shift brightness last I checked and I haven't found a great way to do this on windows desktop (laptops have more built in brightness options that are at least easy to adjust). It sounds like some monitors have fairly easily adjusted brightness but mine is a pain to adjust anything. I tried redshift on windows but it had some issues that I don't remember. Since I just use windows for games, it isn't as big of a deal since games tend to be less bright (and many have brightness adjustment). As my monitor gets older I have more of the opposite issue of it not being bright enough during the day in the summer. Also, I tried gammastep with sway, but it seemed to shift at the wrong time like there is a GMT vs local time mixup. I ended up just switching back to X.
sc__ 5y ago
On Windows 10, I use flux instead of the built in night light. flux gradually increases the strength of the night light over time, which I prefer to the fixed intensity of the Windows 10 night light. Using night mode on PCs greatly reduced the eye strain and sleeping issues I was experiencing due to long days at the computer.

486 points by graderjs 5y ago

In addition to f.lux, I've enabled "Grayscale" color filters. Less distraction + easier for the eyes. Here's how to enable them on Mac: * Open Preferences * Search for "color filters" * Check "Enable color filters" * Select "Grayscale"

SketchySeaBeast 5y ago

I guess now that this is built into many OSs by default is the connection with other smart devices?

nicoburns 5y ago
It is built in, but at the least the Apple implementation isn't very good. It doesn't go red enough to completely eliminate the waking effect.
- dainiusse 5y ago
  Yep. And I hate how apple limits lowest brightness level on iOS devices. I used to jailbreak only to have better screen brightness management...
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    There is an accessibility setting to lower it further (which you can assign to triple home button click). But generally I agree.
    - dainiusse 5y ago
      Thank you! I didn't know that. Not ideal, but still solved my problem
0x6c6f6c 5y ago
If I remember correctly, f.lux had an iOS app but they got removed from the store just prior to Apple announcing their own support for the same feature. They do have an Android app as well as desktop apps. f.lux has been in the space for years and years now.
- SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
  Yeah, I remember downloading this many years ago, but I know for Android and Windows you don't need it anymore.
- jeromegv 5y ago
  flux had an iOS app, but it was always side-loading through Xcode (or for jailbroken) but never on the actual iOS App Store. They need to use private APIs so it was never authorized in the first place.
  - phoenix3200 5y ago
    If I recall correctly, they started with doing a screen overlay, and migrated to using the hardware gamma tables (I think I might have pointed them to it?). Android apps that do screen dimming use overlays, which ends up causing flickering. http://thebigboss.org/dimmer-quit-blinding-yourself http://thebigboss.org/dimmer-quit-blinding-yourself

eminence32 5y ago

I've used flux, or something like it for at least 10 years (these days, most operating systems have this feature built-in and don't require a 3rd party app). My eyes and brain rather like it, though I did have a friend visit me recently and he instantly commented "why is your screen so red?". I was surprised that the change of color was that noticeable to the un-accustomed eye. A quick specific complaint (in hopes of learning about workarounds): The implementation on Windows (known as "Night light") seems particularly bad: Sometimes it won't turn on at the expected time, or sometimes it will only apply on 1 monitor but not the other. Has anyone else seen this? Any hints to make it more reliable?

alisonatwork 5y ago
Yeah, the Windows implementation is annoyingly buggy. I've found the best way to force it on (or off) without going into the settings and toggling it again is to kill explorer.exe via Task Manager - when it restarts then the night light will apply properly again. I have my suspicions the reason why it doesn't work consistently has something to do with power savings or hardware profiles or something, but i haven't been able to reproduce it consistently enough to open a bug report.
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
> I was surprised that the change of color was that noticeable to the un-accustomed eye. You should turn it off once late a night, your retinas will hate you for it :D
- eminence32 5y ago
  Oh, I've tried this and they certainly do :) But if I step away from my computer at night for an hour, and then go back to it, nothing appears unusual or jarring when I return

securingsincity 5y ago

I'm sure it was a mix of things (stress etc) but in 2013, I was regularly working late and my eye started to twitch. I remember downloading f.lux and a lot of eye strain and the eye twitch going away in a few days. Who knows if blue light was the culprit, but I've enjoyed f.lux ever since

ModernMech 5y ago

All the operating systems tried to copy flux, but they can't get it right. On mac with night shift, the colors are never warm enough. On windows with night light they tried progressive reddening but it happens over a matter of minutes rather than hours and isn't configurable. Also it's buggy with turning off. Flux has been resilient in being featureful through the years and has survived being obviated by operating systems including its basic functionality.

qalmakka 5y ago
Sadly, it can't survive the transition to Wayland, given that applying filters on the entire screen is something only the compositor can do and thus it must be handled at that level and not in a separate app, like f.lux did on X11.

kareemm 5y ago

Been a f.lux user for (I want to say) more than a decade. No idea if it actually helps me wind down at night and sleep better, but: 1. When the screen color changes at sunset it's a subtle but powerful cue to know that the work day is coming to a close. And then if I'm on my computer when it changes around bedtime that's a cue to GTF off the computer. 2. All the science I've read suggests removing blue light in the evenings does indeed help with sleep. So why not use it?

arethuza 5y ago
I'd actually quite like something that gave a subtle indication that "the work day is coming to a close"... I've used f.lux for a long time, but it kicks in in the middle of the afternoon in winter and probably about bedtime in summer!
- TorKlingberg 5y ago
  I changed the location in f.lux to somewhere south-west of where I am. Yes it gets dark at 3pm in Sweden in winter. That doesn't mean it's anywhere near bedtime.
- jseban 5y ago
  Use os x built in night shift feature, there you can set the schedule.
kitkat_new 5y ago
Well, all studies? https://time.com/5752454/blue-light-sleep/ https://time.com/5752454/blue-light-sleep/ https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/blue-light-filter-smartphone-night-shift-sleep-study/ https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/blue-light-filter-smar... https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191216173654.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191216173654.h...
- kareemm 5y ago
  I stand corrected. Thanks!

dr-detroit 5y ago

Jamie9912 5y ago

I've just realised i've been using flux for about 10 years now also, and never gave them a penny. I've just donated $25 - https://justgetflux.com/windows/contribute.html https://justgetflux.com/windows/contribute.html

ndr 5y ago
Thank you for the prompt, I just did the same.
knowald 5y ago
Hah, you just made me realise how many years I've been using it and recommending it as a life changing thing to everyone, every time i see a cool screen in the evening. Just said "thanks" to them with the same.
orzig 5y ago
Thanks for the nudge (public philanthropy has positive externalities!) I just did the same, and my day is better for it
iKlsR 5y ago
Over 10 years and the same. I literally cannot use computers or any device without a warm filter. The builtin "night lights" in OSes don't work as well and are wonky. Fantastic software.
toomuchtodo 5y ago
On Mac, this redirects you to the Paypal link https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/justgetflux/10 https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/justgetflux/10 with $10 prefilled but unable to edit. Change the integer param to donate the desired amount. (donated)
lukka5 5y ago
donated $10 as well. My eyes were being taken care by their software for many years

pluc 5y ago

There's also Redshift that was inspired by f.lux which may work better for some (and has a nice gtk tray client): http://jonls.dk/redshift/ http://jonls.dk/redshift/

asicsp 5y ago
I use redshift (haven't tried f.lux) and works great. I use a constant 3000K temperature instead of location/time based changes.
- pluc 5y ago
  My experience is Redshift works better on Linux whereas f.lux works better (or "is more elegantly integrated") on OSX
forgotpwd16 5y ago
I've used redshift since ever but didn't knew f.lux had a Linux version. Though nowadays GNOME and Plasma offer built-in functionality for this, it is still needed for those of us preferring a window manager (and gammastep for Wayland users).

corndoge 5y ago

See also redshift, gammastep https://github.com/jonls/redshift https://github.com/jonls/redshift https://gitlab.com/chinstrap/gammastep https://gitlab.com/chinstrap/gammastep

reportgunner 5y ago

I use this feature on my phone to let me know that it's too late to browse and I should go to sleep. Seeing this post on HN i realized i don't notice it turning on anymore for months, I doubt it's doing anything if all your apps support dark mode.

rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago

I've used f.lux for years until I enabled dark mode at the OS level and in the apps settings for those that require it. More importantly installed the Dark Reader extension (https://darkreader.org https://darkreader.org). This one is incredible: it's much nicer to browser the Web in dark mode than to make page reddish. I now enable Dark Reader at all time (day and night) and can't stand the screen of my coworkers (so dazzling). Idem for my Android device. The only app/webpage I don' apply dark mode/reader to is Google Maps. For now…

boringg 5y ago
Just installed this on your recommendation. I felt my eyes relax as the screen changed colors. I'm hoping this is a long term add. Thanks!
seanw444 5y ago
Same here. I can't use the web without Dark Reader anymore. It's not like other dark mode extensions that just apply a generic "make everything this much darker" filter. It seems to take a lot more into account when it's rendering the page. It usually looks pretty nice. Almost like a native dark mode. Sometimes it leaves black-on-dark for icons and such, but that's negligible, and definitely a good trade-off to my eyes being drained. Side note: Maps is surprisingly good with Dark Reader!
diarrhea 5y ago
That, and for Safari on iOS I bought Noir. Works like a charm and cannot miss it. Noir and automatic reader mode is actually a pleasant way to browse the web (although I often disable reader mode because it gobbles up images etc.).
- artificial 5y ago
  Have you kicked Hyperweb’s tires? Not sure how much functionality you need, happy customer.
  - diarrhea 5y ago

MikusR 5y ago

I tried f.lux on multiple computers and every time it completely messed brightness/colors. Only fix being a full reinstall.

namlem 5y ago

I used to use f.lux but it had such poor configurability. Is it better now? I switched to SunsetScreen a while back which worked much better, but then eventually started using the built-in Windows blue light filter even though it is less powerful than SunsetScreen simply because it's less hassle.

zthrowaway 5y ago

Flux is amazing, and a life saver for eye strain. Way better than Apple’s attempt at warm display settings.

LoveMortuus 5y ago

I used to use f.lux on Win7 but since moving to Win10 I've been using the built-in one. Am I perhaps missing any cool features?

spicybright 5y ago

I used to actually keep flux at it's dimmest setting 24/7 during work. Drove my coworkers crazy when they had to look at my screen.

politelemon 5y ago

It is possible to apply f.lux to HN's top bar by setting the topcolor to ffeee3

tough 5y ago

Flux is awesome, There's also lunar.fyi https://lunar.fyi/ https://lunar.fyi/

alin23 5y ago
Lunar developer here. Thanks for mentioning it! Just a note to avoid confusion: Lunar serves a completely different purpose than f.lux. f.lux changes the colour temperature by altering the Gamma tables. Lunar's main function is controlling the hardware brightness/contrast/volume/input/colors of external monitors using DDC and private macOS methods. macOS also has a native approach to f.lux called Night Shift. I use it with Shifty (https://shifty.natethompson.io https://shifty.natethompson.io) to get the same featureset as f.lux.

ZeroCool2u 5y ago

While it’s not strictly necessary anymore, because most OS’s have at least a basic feature that mimics flux built in now, I feel like we owe the devs a huge debt for forcing the conversation about the toll our ultra high brightness screens have on our sleep patterns and quality and our eyes. Plus, it’s a great example of a really high quality piece of software developed with a lot of care and a huge long term commitment.

int_19h 5y ago
The problem with OS-provided facilities for this is that they often don't give you enough control. I still use f.lux on an Android phone that I rooted specifically for this purpose, because that's the only way I can get dark red on black text in Kindle (for night reading).
- dp-hackernews 5y ago
  I used to use f.lux on Android until I found "Twilight" https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.urbandroid.lux https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.urbandroid... I also used to use f.lux on Linux until i found "Redshift" http://jonls.dk/redshift/ http://jonls.dk/redshift/
  - int_19h 5y ago
    Twilight doesn't do the same thing. It, and all other screen filters on Android that do not require root, can only add color, not subtract it. Thus, it cannot make white text on black background into red text on black background - it can only make it into pink text on red background.
gjvc 5y ago
Amen to that -- f.lux was a revelation to me. Donated.
neal_jones 5y ago
Agreed. I learned about it while at a coding bootcamp when I felt like my eyes were going to break. Total game changer for me.

smoyer 5y ago

I was a happy f.lux user for several years and suddenly had a new (Xubuntu) machine which seemed to override it's settings. Redshift is "built-in" to Xubuntu and I find it to be equivalent for my needs.

qalmakka 5y ago

KDE Plasma has included a builtin feature very similar to f.lux/redshift for a while, which works fine on Wayland. I've been using it constantly for the last 2, 3 years (I think?) and it does its job all right.

pluc 5y ago
Android also has "night light" since like Android 6
alias_neo 5y ago
As does Gnome. I haven't had to use f.lux for many years now because it's built in to every platform I use (KDE, Gnome and Android).
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

branon 5y ago

The original! Very nice program. Nowadays I mainly use Red Moon on Android, and GNOME 3's built-in "Night Light" feature on desktop. I don't use Windows much anymore, but when I do, I run f.lux there.

Markoff 5y ago
I remember I tried Red Moon but it must have had some issue (either bright installation, or bright status bar or something else) because I end yp using "Screen Dimmer (dims notifications too)" from etsang, which is also open source and can recommend, works fine, everything dark plus has very good notificationto easily in steps brighten/darker your screen without going somewhere deep in settings I remember there was some widely popular screen dimmer, which didn't even let you manually change setting and relied on location provided by google services which I don't have, not sure if it's not f.lux because it ws one of the most famous options

prometheus76 5y ago

Besides turning my screen more amber at night, the main feature I use f.lux for is matching my ambient office light. I downloaded an app that measures color temperature and took a picture of a white piece of paper with my phone. My particular ambient light temperature is 4200K because of the fluorescent lights they use in my office. I set my monitor to match that, and it has helped my eyestrain and headaches considerably. The other thing I did to eliminate eyestrain was to get a pair of +1.00 reading glasses, because my eyes are just starting to get a little blurry.

MrWiffles 5y ago
Thank you for mentioning this! I've been experiencing eyestrain and eye pain far more than usual lately and was wondering if there was anything out there I could use to help me figure out what was going on, or at least adapt, beyond glasses (which I now have). I didn't know flux could do this, so thank you!

daneel_w 5y ago

I've used f.lux for more than 12 years now. My preference is 3700K after sunset, and 2600K during the last few hours before bedtime - rather warm color temperatures - and it has definitely improved my ability to wind down before bedtime.

samatman 5y ago

Flux and the various other approaches are a fine way to re-grade the colors of a monitor to be more comfortable. By which I mean, if someone likes to use f.lux in the evening, they find the result more subjectively comfortable or pleasing, it's a great app. I encourage people who are looking to solve sleep problems to not use any backlit screens in the several hours before sleeping. Such evidence as there is on the subject doesn't suggest that redshifting the screen is sufficient. If you've seen someone using a laptop or phone in a dark room, it's quite clear that they're blasting themselves with a flashlight. Filtering some of the blue out isn't going to repair this basic dynamic.

beaconstudios 5y ago
I think the idea is that with a blue light filter on (and your brightness turned down) it's more like candlelight, which doesn't really disrupt sleep.
TameAntelope 5y ago
Yeah, I’ve always found the assumption that f.lux actually redshifted the screen the same way their cited experiments did to be on shaky ground. I don’t recall seeing any studies that directly used f.lux, just studies with blue lightboxes, and that stuck out to me as odd. Monitors, even modern ones, don’t 100% convert their backlights (which are white) to the displayed color, so you always have an amount of washout, and I was always curious if that spoiled the effect, among other unique quirks of computer monitors.

Markoff 5y ago

never used, tried to make it working on Android, but had some issues, was satisfied for years with Darker (Screen Filter) from mlhgdevelopment before I swtiched to Screen Dimmer (dims notifications too) from etsang which I use to these days

janandonly 5y ago

The toll on "sleep quality" has been debunked [1]. The original research only found ANY connection between screen usage in the evening and sleep in Teens. And no separate connection to Blue light or any other colour... [1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191216173654.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191216173654.h...

kmlx 5y ago
> According to the team, using dim, cooler, lights in the evening and bright warmer lights in the day may be more beneficial to our health. so it's actually the opposite to the current common belief. it should be blue at night, warm during the day :)
Karawebnetwork 5y ago
"Contrary to common belief, blue light may not be as disruptive to our sleep patterns as originally thought" Emphasis on "may". "Our findings suggest that using dim, cooler, lights in the evening and bright warmer lights in the day may be more beneficial." Emphasis on "suggests". Also, the study's title itself. "Cones Support Alignment to an Inconsistent World by Suppressing Mouse Circadian Responses to the Blue Colors Associated with Twilight." Emphasis on "mouse". Science oozes back and forth. You should not strongly interpret individual studies. Debunked is a strong word here.
- mynameisvlad 5y ago
  I mean, the same can be said about your comment. You’re strongly interpreting the results the other way (ie by trying to discredit them implicitly). The current study has has not found links between cool light at night and sleep patterns. That may change in the future, sure, but current science suggests said theory is debunked (and I’m not afraid to use that word).
  - janto 5y ago
    Wondering if you would you say that the proposition has been falsified? Because debunked means falsified.

dwighttk 5y ago

Weird I’ve used computers for years without f.lux and haven’t noticed any eye strain symptoms or sleep issues. I also got some blue blocking coating for my eye glasses last time because it was on a big discount and can’t tell the difference (symptom-wise… I can see the included blue laser is mostly stopped and things look slightly yellower) compared to my old glasses.

janandonly 5y ago

So, this app does what an iPhone/iPad/MacBook does out of the box: True Tone [1] [1] https://www.imore.com/why-you-should-use-true-tone-your-iphone-or-ipad https://www.imore.com/why-you-should-use-true-tone-your-ipho...

h4waii 5y ago
Except it's been doing it for over a decade before Apple did.
alin23 5y ago
The macOS equivalent is actually Night Shift, not True Tone. And f.lux was among the first apps to do this cross-platform. Night Shift was developed much later.
- alpb 5y ago
  I don't know if it's fixed but "Flux developer says Apple’s new competitive macOS Night Shift feature falls short" https://9to5mac.com/2017/03/28/flux-developer-says-apples-new-competitive-macos-night-shift-feature-falls-short/ https://9to5mac.com/2017/03/28/flux-developer-says-apples-ne...
  - alin23 5y ago
    It works better than f.lux for me, because it works at a lower level than Gamma table manipulation. I’ve been using Night Shift ever since it was released and I like its color rendering more than f.lux. But it’s subjective, some people like the extreme warmth of f.lux more. It depends on how you perceive colors and how well you can adjust to warmer colors. Shifty is also a very nice addition if you want more control over Night Shift: https://shifty.natethompson.io https://shifty.natethompson.io

herf 5y ago

Thank you to this community for all the support through the years! We're spending a lot of our time on basic research and sensing, and we have a few small updates planned for f.lux, too. The main challenge as we learn more about the biology is to keep things simple enough--it's easy to make things complicated, and it's pretty hard (for me) to distill them to something that makes sense to most people. Also, if you care about how your eyes and circadian system work, don't forget about all the light from outside your screen too.

Andi 5y ago
I'm using this now for years on my Mac, and due to the great configurability I prefer it to the builtin mode. Thank you!
dncornholio 5y ago
> don't forget about all the light from outside your screen too Time for you to make us some great sunglasses :) or curtains..
- teekert 5y ago
  More like ultra-bright leds :)
- aasasd 5y ago
  Just in case: there are yellow glasses marketed specifically for use at the computer and for avoidance of blue light. (This is not an endorsement, however.)
  - lukka5 5y ago
    does someone have any idea if they really have the same effect than f.lux?
    - aasasd 5y ago
      They work pretty much the same way, so I think there shouldn't be a difference in regard to computer screens. As for the surroundings—I toyed with cycling glasses for a bit, which for some reason had amber-yellow plastic, and personally I prefer to just have yellow ‘evening’ lights in the rooms. With cycling glasses, I had more of relaxing effect due to them keeping moisture on my eyes, instead of it being burned away by the winter heating.

tarique313 5y ago

No longer working with Linux Mint and some versions of Ubuntu.

hexo 5y ago

I always found ridiculous what it does to colors, to the point I always ask folks to turn it off when they try to show me their screen. My monitor has "paper" mode, which removes a lot of blue and makes the picture greenish - something I found way more pleasing than f.lux redness.

boomboomsubban 5y ago

I used to be a big fan of f.lux, then I just stopped using it and never felt the need to go back. My eyes never got any more sore and my sleep didn't suffer. I started to wonder how much of it was the placebo effect, the initial change is certainly noticeable but the benefits are hard to actually quantify for yourself.

skocznymroczny 5y ago
I think there is some placebo effect to it. I often see people saying "use f.lux for a while, then try to disable it to see how blinding your normal screen used to be"... but that's because it changes suddenly. If you enable f.lux suddenly without a smooth transition then the screen also looks reddish and weird.

seumars 5y ago

If you're on macOS I would also recommend Black Light [https://michelf.ca/projects/black-light/ https://michelf.ca/projects/black-light/] which lets you add all kinds of color filters to individual (or all) screens.

jader201 5y ago

Many MacOS users (and some Windows users) may not know this, but f.lux supports auto-adjusting the color/brightness of Hue bulbs [1], so that your home lights also match your screen. I installed Hue bulbs in my home office for this reason, which keeps my lights at a nice energizing color during the day, then warms up during sunset (especially useful during the winter Standard time). Unfortunately I’m not aware of similar support for MacOS at this time, but maybe others know of options there. [1] https://justgetflux.com/lighting/ https://justgetflux.com/lighting/

andrewcarter 5y ago
The Home app now supports a dynamic color option by default which changes based on the sun / lighting in your condition. Seems to work- I think it showed up for me about a year ago or so, so it's pretty new.
rroarke 5y ago
Would be cool to get this on linux so you can set it up on a raspberry pi or something similar.
- zimmund 5y ago
  You can use redshift[1] on linux, and there are a lot of cli tools that can be used to easily script color changes in hue lights and others via cron. It's not as integrated as f.lux, but reasonably easy to get working. There's also redshift-gtk to contorl redshift from the systray. [1]: http://jonls.dk/redshift/ http://jonls.dk/redshift/
- beaugunderson 5y ago
  here's the script I used to control my Hue lights on a similar curve to f.lux from Linux: https://github.com/beaugunderson/sleep-lights https://github.com/beaugunderson/sleep-lights
Lramseyer 5y ago
I used it a few years back, but for me the color temperatures never scaled right. I like my lights at 4500-5500K during the day, but it looks a little too warm on my monitor (f.lux defaults daylight to 6500K.) Maybe it's my lights/monitor, but I really wish I could set different curves, or at least different color temperature targets for my lights and monitor. f.lux didn't allow me to do that. It only gives options for "warmer" and "a lot warmer," which both look weird at night. I ultimately hacked something else together, but it was a little disappointing, because I really like f.lux.

shaicoleman 5y ago

If you're using an external monitor, it's better to do it on the monitor itself rather than in software. When you do it on the monitor it applies everywhere, even when rebooting or using another OS. When I did it in software (redshift) I noticed it was causing my laptop to overheat. Here's how I do it on Linux with a Dell U2720Q monitor. sudo apt-get -yy install ddcutil # Install ddcutil on Ubuntu sudo modprobe i2c_dev # Load required kernel module # Night - Set brightness to 20% and color temperature to 3000K sudo ddcutil setvcp 10 20 sudo ddcutil setvcp 1a 43 sudo ddcutil setvcp 18 69 sudo ddcutil setvcp 16 100 # Daytime - Set brightness to 50% and color temperature to 6500K sudo ddcutil setvcp 10 50 sudo ddcutil setvcp 1a 100 sudo ddcutil setvcp 18 100 sudo ddcutil setvcp 16 100

jamal-kumar 5y ago
Ditto for my laptop, the software approach is just a bit untenable when I do work with graphics or design especially because you need consistency in these cases. Personally, I just hit the brightness down button on my keyboard a few times around 8pm. I think windows has this as a built in feature now, too? I'm curious to know what f.lux offers over this: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/set-your-display-for-night-time-in-windows-18fe903a-e0a1-8326-4c68-fd23d7aaf136 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/set-your-display...
- forgotpwd16 5y ago
  First thing I see is f.lux lets you configure the transition (speed/intensity) between day/night modes as well as color temperatures rather having an abstract "strength" setting.
- pewu 5y ago
  One feature missing from the Windows solution, which flux has and it works tremendously, is an automatic trigger to disable the color/brightness change when a certain app is opened. Works beautifully when I'm up to do some Lightroom work.
kelvie 5y ago
Funnily enough I built a tool that does the same for my gigabyte monitor: https://github.com/kelvie/gbmonctl https://github.com/kelvie/gbmonctl Along with some systemd scripts to toggle it for sunruse/sunset, with another simple tool: https://github.com/kelvie/sunrise-monitor https://github.com/kelvie/sunrise-monitor I really wish there was a common (XDG?) interface for monitor brightness so that e.g. Plasma/KDE can hook into this with their sunrise/sunset settings.

thrdbndndn 5y ago

Just curious, do anyone not use this or similar functionality nowadays (in tech)? I use them on my phone (which is the default and I didn't bother to change), but never get used to them on computer screens. I'm pretty sure if I give it more time I can quickly get used to, but just didn't see the appeal enough. I do have a yellow light in my room. But then again I don't use dark mode either, so maybe I'm just a weirdo.

bitshiffed 5y ago
I don't use them on any devices. I don't ever want to look at my screen through a filter, or have colors distorted, any more than is unavoidable. If my eyes need a break, I'll take an actual break from the screen, rather than look at something distorted. I also only use daylight bulbs in my house. "Soft white"/yellow bulbs give things a creepy feeling for me.
Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
I don't use it at all. I sit in front of my computer monitor a minimum of 12 hours/day and don't have any problems with eye strain or sleeping. I wonder if the people that like f.lux are also the same people that claim that light themes are blinding, because I'm of the opinion that if you find a completely white screen is blinding, then either your brightness is too high or you don't have enough ambient light in the room.
layer8 5y ago
Same here. I used f.lux for a while, but the screen always got too dark/too reddish (on all but the lowest settings), straining my eyes and hurting my concentration. In my experience it‘s sufficient to adjust the display brightness to roughly match the ambient lighting; no need for blue-light filtering.

AlwaysRock 5y ago

I've used flux for years. It is great. As someone with mild to bad sleep issues this really helps. It's also a visual cue for me. Oh shit my screen is yellowish. Time to get off the computer and wind down.

sys_64738 5y ago

Built into most OS variants nowadays. Time moves on.

ajolly 5y ago

Now if I could just get flux on my TV! I've seen some devices that will do it but they don't seem 4K compatible

40four 5y ago

I’ve been using flux and the like for a few years now roughly. Personally, I’ve never had a problem with eye strain/ fatigue, or falling asleep. I just figured ‘Why not? It can’t hurt.” I often wonder though is it really having any effect? I can’t tell any perceivable difference. I know many others claim otherwise, but that’s just my experience. The science is not really clear, it’s definitely controversial. Truthfully, I suspect the amount of blue light from our screens is actually much more negligible that we tend to estimate. Unpopular opinion alert, but I don’t think filtering blue light at the screen level, or those glasses they sell really does much of anything. I think it’s more likely the placebo effect is in play here.

davidhyde 5y ago

I believe that it is the intensity rather than the colour temperature of light that keeps you awake at night. The reason that red shifting the light works is that our eyes are more sensitive to the greener part of the spectrum (shifting towards red) and therefore you need a lot more blue light to see the same detail as you would for green or red light. If you have an e-reader that only emits bluish light like a kindle paperwhite then you can turn down the light intensity and increase the font size to compensate for lost of detail sensitivity.

avipars 5y ago

had it for a while, then microsoft, apple , and google all made their own versions of night light

vermaden 5y ago

There is also REDSHIFT and SCTD for this purpose: - https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2018/06/28/freebsd-desktop-part-11-key-components-blue-light-spectrum-suppress/ https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2018/06/28/freebsd-desktop-pa...

txsoftwaredev 5y ago

Just wanted to say I've been using f.lux for a while now and find it a required install on my mac. Thanks!

sleightofmind 5y ago

It has an interesting EULA.

agilob 5y ago

I'm so glad I don't need to remember to install such things and a colour temperature control is now built-in in Gnome and KDE

lanius 5y ago

My previous monitor, even at minimum brightness with flux enabled, was still uncomfortable to view at night. I finally invested in a monitor with low minimum brightness (~0.5 nits) and couldn't be happier.

nhumrich 5y ago

Anyone know how this differs from twilight?

joveian 5y ago

I used f.lux (well, mostly redshift) for a while. After reading some doubts about blue light being particularly harmful I switched to only dimming brightness and found that I can dim more without shifting colors and I prefer that to shifting colors (partly because I have a non-24 hour circadian rhythm and am often awake at night, so I would often mostly see the shifted colors). So I would recommend giving that a try before shifting colors or try both ways and see what works best for you. Redshift can easily just change brightness but f.lux doesn't have an option to just shift brightness last I checked and I haven't found a great way to do this on windows desktop (laptops have more built in brightness options that are at least easy to adjust). It sounds like some monitors have fairly easily adjusted brightness but mine is a pain to adjust anything. I tried redshift on windows but it had some issues that I don't remember. Since I just use windows for games, it isn't as big of a deal since games tend to be less bright (and many have brightness adjustment). As my monitor gets older I have more of the opposite issue of it not being bright enough during the day in the summer. Also, I tried gammastep with sway, but it seemed to shift at the wrong time like there is a GMT vs local time mixup. I ended up just switching back to X.

sc__ 5y ago

On Windows 10, I use flux instead of the built in night light. flux gradually increases the strength of the night light over time, which I prefer to the fixed intensity of the Windows 10 night light. Using night mode on PCs greatly reduced the eye strain and sleeping issues I was experiencing due to long days at the computer.