
Night Shift Mode in macOS Sierra 10.12.4 - xrisk
http://www.macrumors.com/2017/01/24/night-shift-mode-in-macos-sierra-10-12-4/
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paperpunk
Is there any evidence for Night Shift/f.lux having impact on sleep? Last time
I attempted a review I found plenty of explanations but no evidence.

A PNAS article about the use of e-Readers is often cited [0]. However, this
compares a light emitting device to a book, and it's not clear how applicable
it is to Night Shift vs. not Night Shift.

There is some research about the affects of light at different wavelengths on
the human sleep cycle but I'm wary about using that as evidence for the
efficacy of something like f.lux or Night Shift without specific studies done
on their use in practice.

[0]
[http://www.pnas.org/content/112/4/1232.full.html](http://www.pnas.org/content/112/4/1232.full.html)

~~~
HappyTypist
I think for something as simple as Night Shift, "try it yourself and see" is a
valid approach. Even if it's a placebo effect, it's still an effect!

Anecdotally, Flux + Night Shift dramatically improved my longstanding
insomnia. But that's just my anecdotal experience

~~~
paperpunk
If it helps people to improve their hygiene, by placebo effect or otherwise,
then that's a good thing.

However, I ask because I did try it for several months, and did not notice any
effect other than the minor irritation of having to keep turning it off when I
wanted to watch a film in the evening (and the constant malfunctioning of
f.lux – although hopefully those issues would not be present in Night Shift).

I'm not sure I would be able to detect an improvement even if there is one
though - there's too many confounding factors. So I'd like to see some
evidence so I can make an informed decision.

~~~
OskarS
Yeah, I would be curious to see some real studies on that as well, I suspect
that having a bright screen in your face is the problematic part, and that
color temperature only make a very marginal difference, if any at all.

But honestly, I use it because I like it, not for any positive effects it may
have on my sleep. It just makes it more pleasant to look at screens after
nightfall. Also, seeing the screen change is a very pleasant "hey, stop
looking at Twitter/HN and go to bed!" reminder.

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citrusui
First iOS 9.3, then Android 7.0, upcoming Windows Insider builds, and finally
macOS Sierra 10.12.4. I hope the GNOME/Unity/Cinammon developers start
implementing this too. f.lux works as expected, but it starts to get warmer
around an hour before my iPhone does. Small issue, I know, but it does get
annoying over time.

~~~
eikenberry
For Linux I suggest redshift [1]. It has been packaged for a long time and
works great.

[1] [http://jonls.dk/redshift/](http://jonls.dk/redshift/)

~~~
Kostic
Note that redshift currently does not work under GNOME3 when Gnome is running
as a Wayland compositor. There is a feature request[1] for integrating this
functionality into GNOME 3 (and even a nice mockup[2]).

[1]
[https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=741224](https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=741224)

[2] [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-
mo...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-
mockups/master/system-settings/displays/displays-v3.png)

~~~
abrowne
There's a Gnome Shell extension that people report works on Fedora 25 with
Wayland: [https://github.com/benzea/gnome-shell-extension-
redshift](https://github.com/benzea/gnome-shell-extension-redshift)

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wlesieutre
My biggest disappointment with the new Macbook Pro is that it didn't include
tunable color temperature for the keyboard. For an iPad, just changing the
screen works because that's all it is. When your keyboard is a separate
glowing thing, having your screen at 2200K and keys at 6500K looks awful. I
used to turn the backlit keys off while running f.lux, but you're stuck with a
touch bar at minimum now.

Oh well.

EDIT: Obviously the touch bar is full color and could be shifted like the
screen. But because Apple's stance is that it's part of the keyboard, and the
keyboard can't shift, I don't think they will. Curious if anyone's tested it
though.

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FigBug
If you want you house lights to do the same thing, get some Philips Hue bulbs
and this app I wrote: [https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/circadian-hue-for-
philips-hu...](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/circadian-hue-for-philips-
hue/id1165687051?mt=12&ign-mpt=uo%3D4)

My old office didn't get much external light, so I wrote this app to give me a
sense of time of day. Now I have a better office I still use it.

~~~
malandrew
Nice. Would it be easy to port to iOS as well? I reckon that you'd mostly just
need to implement the user interface.

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dbg31415
Flux has been such a great tool. I love that Apple is copying that
functionality and I hope the Flux team understands that imitation is the
sincerest form of flattery.

~~~
asendra
Well, given that the Flux team has refused for years to allow us to configure
the times and for how long it activates itself, I welcome Apple bringing this
to the mac.

~~~
ClassyJacket
I can't understand why this is. Surely it was harder to implement the sunrise
sync than a simple time dropdown?

This is the one reason I want to get away from Flux.

Does anyone know what their supposed motivation was for not letting us set the
start and end time?

~~~
asendra
I read the other day a bullshity response in their forums like that their
objective was to understand human behaviour not just set timers or something
like that.

Edit:

\- "Our goal is to further the understanding of human biology, not just turn
things orange on a timer. It's a longer term undertaking and a much more
difficult one."

[https://forum.justgetflux.com/topic/237/custom-sunset-
sunrus...](https://forum.justgetflux.com/topic/237/custom-sunset-sunruse-
schedule-default-is-not-ok-for-me/84)

~~~
dingo_bat
Lol. That's indescribably smug.

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ClassyJacket
I'm glad they added this. I was disappointed that it wasn't in the Sierra
announcement. Guess they just needed a bit more time.

I will be glad to finally be able to dump Flux. It's mind-bogglingly insane,
but Flux still doesn't allow you to set a custom start and end time. I
certainly don't need my screen going orange a full six hours before I go to
bed. So I'll be getting away from it onto this official one the day it's
available.

I've tweeted them about it a few times, but they don't reply, and it's not
open source, so I can't fix it myself.

Plus, Flux is incompatible with fullscreen YouTube on the Macbook Pro, which
is a really big problem too.

~~~
Sharlin
The newest version finally does, sort of. It supports setting a "bedtime"
color (and a custom time) independent of the "sunset" color, so you can have
eg. 5500K in daytime, ~3500K in the evening (matching normal interior
lighting), and ~2000K when it's actually bedtime. Or just set the same color
for the first two.

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CalRobert
Has anyone produced a screen that isn't backlit in recent years? I see there's
a 13" e-ink display ([https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/paperlike-world-s-
first-e...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/paperlike-world-s-first-e-ink-
monitor-13-3#/) ) but I don't know if it needs to be e-ink or simply not
backlit. I worked last night to candle light and it was lovely; would like to
be able to do the same on computer.

Perhaps it's worth finding an old monitor to kill the backlight on to try this
out.

~~~
throwanem
You needn't bother. Having repaired a considerable number of displays with
dead backlight inverters, I can say from experience that you won't be able to
see anything.

(Light has to pass through an LCD in order to produce a perceptible image.
Watch displays, pre-backlight Palm devices, non-backlit e-ink displays, and
the like do this by reflecting back light that arrives through the screen.
Computer displays all but universally do it with a backlight; without one, and
without a reflective layer behind the LC layer, you see a blank black
rectangle no matter what the crystal layer is doing.)

~~~
skyyler
If they're gonna kill the backlight anyways, I doubt it'd be much effort to
put something reflective where the backlight was.

~~~
throwanem
You'd be surprised. Getting good light reflection without also producing an
image of the surroundings to conflict with the display is harder than it
seems.

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anotherturn
I've used f.lux but the problem I find is that if I'm unwinding in the evening
watching some youtube / netflix on my laptop the colour shift is quite
annoying.

By contrast, on my iphone I tend to not need accurate colour representation so
the recently introduced Night Shift Mode is hardly noticed.

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ruminasean
I'd love to see some form of universal dark mode or reverse mode on Macs and
ios. Something that reverses backgrounds so I'm reading white text on black
background. There are various workarounds, but it would be nice to not have to
use them.

~~~
anotherturn
I've installed a firefox plugin that does this - just a few css rules for
background color, text colour, etc. It totally ruins all the designy aspects
of the web, but it makes reading a lot less tiring for my eyes.

~~~
noisem4ker
If you're referring to "Dark Background and Light Text" by Mikhail
Khvoinitsky, I can vouch for it. It also works surprisingly well on mobile:

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/android/addon/dark-
backgrou...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/android/addon/dark-background-
light-text/)

~~~
anotherturn
Yes - that's the one. I've set it for the traditional dark background and
green text (as I have for terminal, sublime, etc.). Does wonders for the eyes.

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thrusong
This is hardly a scientific review, but I definitely feel like I've started
sleeping better since I started using Night Shift on my phone and f.lux on my
MacBook. I seem to fall asleep faster and I don't toss or turn as much.

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4714
So glad to hear this. I've had so many problems with flux during the past
year.

~~~
frou_dh
Yeah - display colour is an OS-level concern. This feature belongs in the OS
itself.

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vonklaus
It's tough to get excited about macOS. F.lux is 7 years old. I am running
Yosemite and I have to keep my own installer for new machines & restoration.

I like nightshift, don't get me wrong, but I've never met someone who based
their software ecosystem on a vendor provided way to change the color temp...

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celerrimus
Nice feature. And at this point i have dilemma, i stopped os x updates after
Apple decided to remove remaining battery time. I like f.lux idea, but
sometimes have some problems with it, so i would like to test Night Shift.
Hope remaining time will return with future update

~~~
scrapcode
Do you have any reasons other than having a somewhat decent idea of how much
time you have left? Battery power doesn't work on a time basis as power
expenditure isn't consistent.

~~~
hueving
>Battery power doesn't work on a time basis as power expenditure isn't
consistent

It can be quite consistent if you do very simple things (CPU-wise). SSH-ing
into servers and working on them all day is pretty consistent in battery life
on my MBP.

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mrmondo
Glad to see this is built in now, very useful on iOS and iOS apps

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satyajeet23
RIP Flux.

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nkkollaw
First they killed Flash, now it's Flux's turn.

~~~
xs
Flash was so bad that it killed itself. Flux was so good that Apple
implemented it. 2 different stories. You could compare this with Alfred
though...

~~~
mokkol
Is Alfred really killed? I am still a heavy user, many improvements compare to
Spotlight for me.

~~~
michelb
It sure is not killed by Spotlight, I use many features in Alfred that are not
available in Spotlight. Launching applications and doing simple tasks like
calculations are possible with Spotlight. Snippets in Alfred work better than
the OSX 'text' feature. Alfred with the Powerpack is really great.

