I wanted to say that we stopped thinking of f.lux as a way to match a room about 8 years ago. We have been consumed with the idea that if the human circadian system is controlled by light, and if nobody knows what the numbers are in real life, then it is vitally important that we figure it out.
Our main effort since then has been about people and understanding how they react to light over time, and how technology can fix it. f.lux is intended to be a seed that will explain how all of our lighting can work better. It's a big project that extends beyond screens, and we think software is central to fixing the problem.
People who wake up at the same time need different timing and amounts of light, and it's not really about matching the color of a screen to a room. We've learned that almost every room is already too dim (during the day) or too bright (at night). And the trouble is that most people can't figure this out by looking around - they need some tools to help out.
This system that controls sleep and alertness is nonvisual, which means that everyone's intuition about what looks good might be pretty far off from what it does to your body. This certainly is borne out by the last 100 years of electric lighting.
Electric lighting has shifted sleep schedules by >4 hours, and people are not sleeping nearly as much as a result. We think this is connected to ADHD, cancer, type 2 diabetes, obesity, mood disorders, and many other serious problems.
So while it is true that other people have turned screens orange like f.lux did in 2009, the truth is we didn't do nearly enough back then. Our goal is to understand the biology and make something that actually works for a wide variety of people.
We have tried to address this question ("people, not screens") in little pieces, e.g., why we are making big changes to f.lux's schedule default settings on our "big update" page:
Do you have any suggestions for using flux as someone with a non 24 hour schedule? Right now changing the wake time is so buried that I'll often push it forward several hours, then come back in a week to do it again.
Is there an easier way to handle this? Perhaps some way to tell flux "I just woke up" and have it figure things out? Hook into a sleep tracker like on fitness trackers or Sleep as Android?
Seriously thank you so much for this project and all the effort that's gone in so far. I've been using it since about a month after first release and I cannot imagine using a computer without it.
Cool that you're on HN, and your mission sounds fantastic.
One thing I've never figured out though, what's f.lux's business model? You two seem to be investing considerable resources into all of this for years on end, is it all charity?
Interesting. You've got me wondering whether it would be feasible and useful to hook up all lights in the room and adjust their brightness and colour temperature as the day progresses.
Reminder that both Mac OS and Windows include blue light reducing as a built-in feature. In case you don't like installing applications for something the OS already does like me.
I use F.lux because they are the little guy, and first to this market by a long shot. Getting Sherlocked [1] by the big players after years of original work on a project is terrible. Lots of small businesses (or projects for that matter) is much preferable to a handful of large ones blatantly cloning ideas they did not originate.
I have been using f.lux for years, and was happy that when NightShift became available that I could just use it.
The short of it is that, for me at least, NightShift is almost useless. It simply does not get red or dim enough if I'm reading right before bed. Same thing goes for Android, which is why I have Twilight still installed there. Seems like such an easy option to make the color temperature more customizable, so I think it sucks that Apple didn't do this.
MacOS's feature at least is far weaker than Flux by a longshot. It doesn't tint the colors nearly enough. Sure the OS technically does what Flux does, but when the third Parth app is so much better, it makes sense to use it. Also Flux came out far before. And no thank you or notice has been given to them by the big guys. For that reason alone I'd continue to use Flux.
I must admit I stopped using f.lux when Windows 10 came with Night Light, however this update is making me reconsider. I really like the wake-up-time idea, as well as considering "early evening" a separate time interval for which a color temperature is stored.
Just wanted to take a moment and thank the developer for their hard work. It Really started a movement and is now standard on pretty much every OS now.
I once was a regular streamer on Twitch.tv and would regularly plug the use of blue light reducing tools. Another fun thing you can do is wear orange safety goggles to completely block all blue light from the room. You look pretty silly, and I'd wear them on stream sometimes. And people would always ask me, "what's with the orange goggles?" There were a few times when I'd get someone to install F.lux, they'd use it for a bit, and then turn it off, and they'd instantly get it. If you try this experiment for yourself, the difference is incredibly jarring.
If you have any trouble sleeping at night, I'd highly recommend trying one of these strategies. My orange goggles made their way into my digital nomad one bag, they were so useful for my sleep. Occasionally I'd actually sleep in them.
If you want to get really crazy, you can order a bit of a material called "rubylith" (just do a Google search for it) and put it over your laptop or phone screen. It makes things really red, but if you are just reading your Kindle books in bed it can really help prevent staying up until 2am on accident.
I was using f.lux/redshift for a few years because everyone else was using it. During a reinstall of my system I forgot to install it and it took me about a week to realize it was missing...
I never bothered to install it again because I realized I did not gather any benefits from it.
I used to think it didn't help because honestly the difference was marginal, but when I turned it up Candle or Ember I started really noticing how I got more tired in the evenings.
> There’s one big slider, and you can adjust it whenever you want to change it. f.lux will remember what you choose during the day, in the early evening, and at night.
Does that mean I can’t adjust the preferred temperature at night if it’s currently day time? If so this is a huge regression. If not, the two sentences are badly worded. I already find the current f.lux interface badly designed[0] and this might just make it worse.
[0]: First, its main interface has a slider and a button group below it. That makes no sense because the button group affects what settings the slider display. It really should be a tabbed region enclosing the slider instead. Next, options like “fast transition,” “sleep in on weekends” really shouldn’t be placed in the menu bar. It makes the initial setup a lot more troublesome, and really makes no sense given you already have a window to configure it. And some options aren’t really clearly described in the first place.
You can adjust daytime/sunset/night-time under one view (via upper right "grill"-options icon / "Adjust day & night colors together") as 3 separate sliders - works fine for my use-case scenario. What I'm most happy about is that they've fixed the stuttering issues when using special graphic modes (games..etc.) in v4! :). Also, for the lazy Win upgrade: https://justgetflux.com/dlwin.html
I have been using f.lux for years and loved it. One of the first things I would install on any system. But this latest update fundamentally broke for me. It goes dark an hour or more early, gets light again at sunset. It brightens up an hour before sunrise, and darkens as day rises. I end up manually enabling and disabling it to get things right, and half the time just kill the process.
Most likely the combined settings of some combination of my wake time and/or daylight savings time has something to do with it. I'm not sure. But before this last update, it always "just worked". And now that is no longer true.
I'll go against the grain here and say that I see no benefits in Flux. I used to be in the hype train, but I've noticed it annoys me more than anything, and every time when the night would come I would just disable Flux until it just didn't make sense to have it installed on my laptop.
I don't know if it's just me, or if it's just a trend marketed by pseudo-science claims.
Former neuroscientist here: it's just you. You may not respond sufficiently/differently to cutting out blue wavelengths, but for many people, it helps.
It's not pseudo-science, and I'm not even sure why you said that. There's quite a bit of literature at this point demonstrating that the suprachiasmatic nucleus (the primary timekeeper of the body) is heavily entrained by specialized retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs), that are most sensitive to blue wavelengths.
It's probably not just you, but it's more than a trend. I actually found it because I already often turned down the blue on my desktop screen at night using its controls, before I heard of any supposed health benefits, and I was searching for a way to do the same on my laptop.
I can't say I notice if it helps me sleep better, but I definitely find it much easier on the eyes.
When I turn it off at night, with as little brightness as possible on my monitor, the blue hurts my eyes.
The scientific ideas behind it regarding sleep sound likely, but honestly if they were all proven to be crock tomorrow I'd still use it to ease my eye strain because it clearly can do that.
Biggest problem with F.lux used to be that it was tied to geo-location. As a Finnish person (with sometimes only a few hours of sunlight per day), you had to fake your location to something that would approximate the desired circadian rhythm. I hope this has been addressed by now.
(E.g. on macOS and iPhone you can simply just set the daily time when Night Shift activates.)
[+] [-] herf|8 years ago|reply
I wanted to say that we stopped thinking of f.lux as a way to match a room about 8 years ago. We have been consumed with the idea that if the human circadian system is controlled by light, and if nobody knows what the numbers are in real life, then it is vitally important that we figure it out.
Our main effort since then has been about people and understanding how they react to light over time, and how technology can fix it. f.lux is intended to be a seed that will explain how all of our lighting can work better. It's a big project that extends beyond screens, and we think software is central to fixing the problem.
People who wake up at the same time need different timing and amounts of light, and it's not really about matching the color of a screen to a room. We've learned that almost every room is already too dim (during the day) or too bright (at night). And the trouble is that most people can't figure this out by looking around - they need some tools to help out.
This system that controls sleep and alertness is nonvisual, which means that everyone's intuition about what looks good might be pretty far off from what it does to your body. This certainly is borne out by the last 100 years of electric lighting.
Electric lighting has shifted sleep schedules by >4 hours, and people are not sleeping nearly as much as a result. We think this is connected to ADHD, cancer, type 2 diabetes, obesity, mood disorders, and many other serious problems.
So while it is true that other people have turned screens orange like f.lux did in 2009, the truth is we didn't do nearly enough back then. Our goal is to understand the biology and make something that actually works for a wide variety of people.
We have tried to address this question ("people, not screens") in little pieces, e.g., why we are making big changes to f.lux's schedule default settings on our "big update" page:
https://justgetflux.com/news/pages/v4/bigupdate/
But it is hard to talk about outcomes when nobody at all expects you to be thinking about them. Snake oil is not what we're about.
We have a lot of work to do -- apparently including a lot of writing and explaining, and I appreciate your support.
[+] [-] reificator|8 years ago|reply
Is there an easier way to handle this? Perhaps some way to tell flux "I just woke up" and have it figure things out? Hook into a sleep tracker like on fitness trackers or Sleep as Android?
Seriously thank you so much for this project and all the effort that's gone in so far. I've been using it since about a month after first release and I cannot imagine using a computer without it.
[+] [-] Bromskloss|8 years ago|reply
That's funny. All I want is having nice, soft colours when I'm up all night.
[+] [-] skrebbel|8 years ago|reply
One thing I've never figured out though, what's f.lux's business model? You two seem to be investing considerable resources into all of this for years on end, is it all charity?
In any case, thanks!
[+] [-] Tharkun|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] graeme|8 years ago|reply
Ios night shift isn’t nearly as good, and jailbreaking ios is much harder than formerly.
[+] [-] epmaybe|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] internet2000|8 years ago|reply
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207513
https://www.howtogeek.com/302186/how-to-enable-night-light-o...
[+] [-] gottebp|8 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_(software)
[+] [-] azdle|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hn_throwaway_99|8 years ago|reply
The short of it is that, for me at least, NightShift is almost useless. It simply does not get red or dim enough if I'm reading right before bed. Same thing goes for Android, which is why I have Twilight still installed there. Seems like such an easy option to make the color temperature more customizable, so I think it sucks that Apple didn't do this.
[+] [-] skinnymuch|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skrebbel|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Something1234|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nasredin|8 years ago|reply
If you use Windows 7 you have to go third-party.
The older iOS also doesn't have it.
[+] [-] _arvin|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wereHamster|8 years ago|reply
Not everybody is on Sierra yet. My work laptop still runs El Capitan.
[+] [-] dingo_bat|8 years ago|reply
Edit: also android and ios
[+] [-] zachruss92|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dcre|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidscolgan|8 years ago|reply
If you have any trouble sleeping at night, I'd highly recommend trying one of these strategies. My orange goggles made their way into my digital nomad one bag, they were so useful for my sleep. Occasionally I'd actually sleep in them.
If you want to get really crazy, you can order a bit of a material called "rubylith" (just do a Google search for it) and put it over your laptop or phone screen. It makes things really red, but if you are just reading your Kindle books in bed it can really help prevent staying up until 2am on accident.
[+] [-] sampl|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blibble|8 years ago|reply
no phone home/automatic updates (plus it's open source)
[+] [-] nasredin|8 years ago|reply
RedshiftGUI.
Small, portable, sometimes a bit buggy but absolutely irreplaceable.
There's also a .NET based one, but it's so slow it feels like you are starting Photoshop, so it's crap IMHO.
[+] [-] chungy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gka_|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] yoodenvranx|8 years ago|reply
I never bothered to install it again because I realized I did not gather any benefits from it.
[+] [-] Retr0spectrum|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nightmunnas|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kccqzy|8 years ago|reply
Does that mean I can’t adjust the preferred temperature at night if it’s currently day time? If so this is a huge regression. If not, the two sentences are badly worded. I already find the current f.lux interface badly designed[0] and this might just make it worse.
[0]: First, its main interface has a slider and a button group below it. That makes no sense because the button group affects what settings the slider display. It really should be a tabbed region enclosing the slider instead. Next, options like “fast transition,” “sleep in on weekends” really shouldn’t be placed in the menu bar. It makes the initial setup a lot more troublesome, and really makes no sense given you already have a window to configure it. And some options aren’t really clearly described in the first place.
[+] [-] dingdingdang|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] joncrocks|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codingdave|8 years ago|reply
Most likely the combined settings of some combination of my wake time and/or daylight savings time has something to do with it. I'm not sure. But before this last update, it always "just worked". And now that is no longer true.
[+] [-] Arubis|8 years ago|reply
That said, I still deeply miss the long-dead Nocturne for its “night vision mode”, which was perfect for working in the dead of night. Closest I can find to a good description: https://lifehacker.com/259154/enable-night-vision-mode-with-...
[+] [-] baby|8 years ago|reply
I don't know if it's just me, or if it's just a trend marketed by pseudo-science claims.
[+] [-] KingMob|8 years ago|reply
It's not pseudo-science, and I'm not even sure why you said that. There's quite a bit of literature at this point demonstrating that the suprachiasmatic nucleus (the primary timekeeper of the body) is heavily entrained by specialized retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs), that are most sensitive to blue wavelengths.
Here's a publicly-accessible review paper if you wish to learn more: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4254760/#BX1
[+] [-] icebraining|8 years ago|reply
I can't say I notice if it helps me sleep better, but I definitely find it much easier on the eyes.
[+] [-] reificator|8 years ago|reply
The scientific ideas behind it regarding sleep sound likely, but honestly if they were all proven to be crock tomorrow I'd still use it to ease my eye strain because it clearly can do that.
[+] [-] kennu|8 years ago|reply
(E.g. on macOS and iPhone you can simply just set the daily time when Night Shift activates.)
[+] [-] creativityland|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jivckack|8 years ago|reply