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f.lux has been updated to a new version

597 points| dailo10 | 12 years ago |justgetflux.com

261 comments

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[+] heydenberk|12 years ago|reply
f.lux is one of my favorite pieces of software. It just does what it's supposed to and I hardly even think about it. Being near the 40th parallel, it rarely activates from April to October. At some point in October, as it did a week ago, it naturally and unobtrusively becomes indispensable again.

Something that happens quite frequently is non-technical friends see my laptop at night and ask "why it is orange?". When I temporarily deactivate f.lux, they shrink from the intrusive blue light and need no further explanation.

[+] jrnkntl|12 years ago|reply
Heads up: not yet available for Linux and Mac.
[+] EricaJoy|12 years ago|reply
Here I thought I was looking in the wrong places for the new settings. Thanks for the heads up.
[+] herf|12 years ago|reply
Modified the text to say, yes, this is our Windows update. Many of the features are on Mac already, since we've done a dozen updates for it in the interim. But we're planning another Mac update soon.
[+] zen_boy|12 years ago|reply
Thank you for posting this.

I was wondering why the version number on Mac still was 23.0 after the update.

[+] mdciotti|12 years ago|reply
My thanks as well. I had the same confusion, it's curious that they left out this detail from the blog post.
[+] josefresco|12 years ago|reply
Hard to run a neat tool like f.lux when you design for the web. Reason being that I need to "see" the web like my clients and their customers do. Same reason I don't run ad-blockers, or many browser add-ons that modify the browsing experience.

I found when using it for personal use, there are times when the time of day, doesn't align with my energy levels and I ended up disabling it enough that it became a nuisance.

[+] ewencp|12 years ago|reply
Given the huge variation in (mis)calibrated settings on top of the huge variation of displays themselves, you'd probably be fine running f.lux. In fact, I would think you would want a more flexible tool so you can actually test what different users might be seeing given different display configurations.
[+] actionscripted|12 years ago|reply
I agree for the most part, however when I'm at the design phase I'm generally working from required brand palettes or using swatches I've defined so I know the colors are good.

Maybe I'm Doing It Wrong™, but I design all the time with F.lux in this manner and don't have any problems.

[+] MartinCron|12 years ago|reply
I need to "see" the web like my clients and their customers do

The only way that's possible is to do a lot of travel.

[+] vertr07|12 years ago|reply
So turn it off while you are working.
[+] iambateman|12 years ago|reply
I agree for design. But for development, I feel like I can get the feel of what I'm doing even without full luminance.
[+] pwthornton|12 years ago|reply
f.lux has a suspend for an hour function for when you're doing color sensitive work. You can also turn it off entirely if you'd like. I don't do photo editing or anything majorly graphical with it on.
[+] aqme28|12 years ago|reply
Agreed on both counts. I got tired of hitting "suspend for an hour" every single goddamn hour, so I had to tell it I live somewhere in the middle of nowhere. that aligns more with my ideal sleep habits.
[+] sovande|12 years ago|reply
Being wary of using too much resources in my own programs I'm always a little surprised and disappointed when I see small utility programs like this use resources like a drunken sailor on shore leave. Flux is currently using 118 MB of real memory and 0.1% CPU.

Using otool -L /Applications/Flux.app/Contents/MacOS/Flux you can see an impressive number of frameworks included. I guess inclusion of the webkit framework is the biggest culprit. Why all this is needed to simply dim the light on my screen is beyond me.

That said, Flux is perfect functionality wise and very useful.

[+] danudey|12 years ago|reply
The reason for WebKit is to be able to show a Google Maps frame to help people choose their location to get a more accurate sunrise/sunset. Not sure if that level of accuracy is necessary.

That said, the vast majority of OS X apps will link against the WebKit framework; not just Safari, but also Adium, Tweetbot, Mail.app, Growl, Notes, TextMate, iTunes, etc. It's pretty much guaranteed that it's in memory already, so there's no harm linking against it.

As for memory, ps reports about 64 MB of RSS; Activity Monitor reports 47.5 MB of memory used. Seems okay to me.

Which version of Mac OS are you using?

[+] geofft|12 years ago|reply
I wrote a patch to redshift to make it work on my Mac, and I've been enjoying that: https://bugs.launchpad.net/redshift/+bug/1225567

It's command-line, like the Linux version, which means it's very lightweight. It's using 0% CPU (looks like 4 seconds of CPU over the last week or two), but it does seem to use 111 MB memory -- I'm curious why and might poke at it. (Yay free software.)

wyvern:~/src/redshift/redshift-1.7/src gthomas$ otool -L redshift redshift: /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/CoreGraphics.framework/Versions/A/CoreGraphics (compatibility version 64.0.0, current version 600.0.0) /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 169.3.0)

[+] iamthebest|12 years ago|reply
Same problem on windows. I installed the latest version and it's perpetually using 0.03 percent CPU with stack:

wow64cpu.dll!TurboDispatchJumpAddressEnd+0x6c0 wow64cpu.dll!TurboDispatchJumpAddressEnd+0xf5 wow64.dll!Wow64SystemServiceEx+0x1ce wow64.dll!Wow64LdrpInitialize+0x42b ntdll.dll!RtlUniform+0x6e6 ntdll.dll!RtlCreateTagHeap+0xa7 ntdll.dll!LdrInitializeThunk+0xe ntdll.dll!NtWaitForMultipleObjects+0x15 kernel32.dll!WaitForMultipleObjectsEx+0x8e flux.exe+0x3921 ntdll.dll!RtlDeleteBoundaryDescriptor+0x1b ntdll.dll!RtlMultiByteToUnicodeN+0x11a kernel32.dll!RegSetValueExA+0x11f flux.exe+0x2841 flux.exe+0x561e8 kernel32.dll!BaseThreadInitThunk+0x12 ntdll.dll!RtlInitializeExceptionChain+0x63 ntdll.dll!RtlInitializeExceptionChain+0x36

More annoying though is the fact that it causes frame skips and audio skipping when I'm using the BSNES emulator. The only remedy is to uninstall it.

[+] herf|12 years ago|reply
Some notes--

When we recompiled for 64-bit/universal (from 32-bit before), f.lux's RAM usage went from 6MB to 29MB (but Apple requested that we change it, so we did.) You could probably set f.lux to run in 32-bit mode and have the old footprint.

CoreLocation is an important feature for us, and we have to include a map and a Javascript host to access Google's geolocation service at all. There is no more reliable way than Webkit.

We've considered breaking into a daemon and a GUI, which would also allow us to make a preference pane, but it's a lot of work for not much benefit.

[+] option_greek|12 years ago|reply
Takes around 25MB on windows. May be the UI graphics on mac are better ?
[+] Tobu|12 years ago|reply
Redshift is doing pretty great: 3044K resident, 560K with shared libraries amortised in gnome system monitor.
[+] T-hawk|12 years ago|reply
f.lux is great, but I really really really wish it would allow custom control of the timing instead of pegging to sunset. I don't want my screen going red at 4:30 pm in the winter eight or more hours before bed. 10 pm would be about right. f.lux can be manually controlled, but that's much less useful since I'll never remember to turn it back to red at the times I want. "Disable for an hour" is useful once, and really tedious to repeat for six hours.

And in this update: "Movie mode ... lasts 2½ hours." Seriously? Why in the world not prompt for a time duration, or use a dropdown or flyout menu for various 30 minute intervals?

[+] NatW|12 years ago|reply
Awesome project, thank you!! It would be helpful if the creators listed the latest version number on their site so folks don't need to install it to see if it's e.g: version 23.0 or something else. FYI: the latest version seems to be 23.0 for mac at the moment.
[+] tokanizar|12 years ago|reply
Agree. A version suffixed download file should be easier. Currently, there's no update for Mac yet.
[+] molf|12 years ago|reply
Flux is fantastic. I just wish it were built into iOS too, so I can have something similar on my iPad/iPhone without jailbreaking.
[+] saturdaysaint|12 years ago|reply
I really wish someone would put f.lux in a TV or receiver. Sure, it's not ideal for critical viewing, but it'd be great for casual tv watching/gaming at night. Anyone found good solutions for that? I tried amber glasses but it's a bit of an awkward solution and somehow doesn't feel as effective as f.lux.

Would lowering the blue light in the TV's picture settings and the brightness accomplish everything f.lux does?

[+] ovi256|12 years ago|reply
Many modern displays have color temperature controls, so you can lower it at night. The blue light setting comes close to the same effect, AFAIK.
[+] josefresco|12 years ago|reply
My LG TV has an ambient light sensor which will adjust the brightness of the TV. One issue is that when the TV first turns on the default (or prior) brightness is often brighter than the sensor detects. Seconds after powering on, the TV will darken which if you hadn't seen the brighter version would seem normal (guests have asked if the TV is broken after witnessing this)

At night (up with a sick kid) the feature is great and you couldn't imagine watching TV at night without it.

[+] corin_|12 years ago|reply
What sort of amber glasses? I've heard great feedback about Gunnar Optiks, though I've never tried them myself (for more than 30 seconds) and they're not very cheap. http://www.gunnars.com/

Disclaimer: I have met people from Gunnar a few times and I know one of their marketing agencies very well - but have never been paid by Gunnar for anything :)

[+] diminoten|12 years ago|reply
I hear so much about f.lux, but to me I don't know if the science quite backs it up like everyone says it does. I've found it suffers from the, "They used the word science so it must be good" problem.

Why hasn't anyone done a study on specifically what f.lux attempts to do? Sure, light at night causes people problems sleeping, but does f.lux actually make a difference? Can we quantify that difference in a way that controls for the fanboy (formerly known as placebo) effect?

[+] polyfractal|12 years ago|reply
Result from a quick pubmed search (I haven't actually read the paper):

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24110034

>Effects of LED-backlit computer screen and emotional selfregulation on human melatonin production.

>[...] Finally, we can also report that the blue light of LED-backlit computer screen significantly suppress melatonin production (91%) more than red light (78%) and no light (44%).

[+] joverholt|12 years ago|reply
Look up how blue led light can disrupt sleeping. Ever notice how bright blue led is compared to others (red, yellow)? My cable modem has blue leds for the indicator lights, and in a dark room, it is amazing how bright they are. f.lux makes your monitor use less of the blue components of light and more of the reds. It will make your screen look funny till you get used to it, which takes minutes. To really see what it does, in a darkened room, turn off f.lux
[+] calinet6|12 years ago|reply
What this page needs is a big "Download" link.
[+] chli|12 years ago|reply
Great update !

Now I'm just missing : "automatically disable if Photoshop is running" (I got caught a few times)

[+] test1235|12 years ago|reply
Same for watching videos.
[+] RyanMcGreal|12 years ago|reply
I start work before 6:00 AM and f.lux is a godsend. I actually feel my body go aahhhh as the sun comes up outside the window and my screen shifts to blue.
[+] dzhiurgis|12 years ago|reply
The appearance on my setup if quite hilarious: http://imgur.com/1VrPWNw

The cheap Dell monitors got quite small horizontal visibility angle. Additionally, the USB adapter doesn't seem to be supported.

[+] ZoFreX|12 years ago|reply
> A simple schedule for Philips Hue, so you can f.lux your house

This sounds pretty cool! Has anyone who has a Hue tried this yet?

[+] jaxbot|12 years ago|reply
As someone who has used f.lux for the last few years (and more so after I've started classes), any single one of these is a welcome update. Together? I'll take it as a late birthday present.
[+] ksrm|12 years ago|reply
The only thing that annoys me about f.lux is the lack of flexibility. Why can I only disable it for one hour? Why are there only two transition speeds - 20s and 60m?
[+] joelackner|12 years ago|reply
the alt-pg up/dwn feature to adjust brightness is pretty great. the fact that it rolls back in the morning is pretty clever, i always found myself having to fidget with settings on my monitor.

i wish more devices, like tvs, had flux baked in.

[+] ancientworldnow|12 years ago|reply
I'm speaking as a colorist working in film/television here. TV's already have enough issues destroying the look we carefully craft with "features" like dynamic lighting, motion smoothing, vivid mode, etc. A huge color shift is going to throw this off even more and dramatically change the look and tone to the detriment of the work. This is great for reading text on a screen, but should be disabled for viewing media - you wouldn't look at the Mona Lisa with amber glasses.
[+] vladiliescu|12 years ago|reply
It is pretty great, however it cannot be changed to another key combination and if you happen to use that particular shortcut in some other apps (cough OneNote cough) you're pretty much screwed.
[+] nitrogen|12 years ago|reply
They used to. My grandfather had ancient color TV when I was very young that used a photo sensor to adjust itself to the room lighting's color balance.