
F.lux major update - cconstantin
https://justgetflux.com/news/pages/v4/bigupdate/?v=4.43
======
ComputerGuru
Windows 10 and OS X now offer "flux" natively, as does iOS (after the whole
debacle of forcing fl.ux out of the app store and then implementing the
feature into the OS for themselves).

I was a loyal f.lux user for a long time, but now there's really no point.

Additionally, f.lux doesn't (perhaps didn't, I should check the changelog on
this new version) take into account OS-native color shifting and (at least on
Windows) caused "night mode" to be enacted on top of the OS' own "night mode"
leaving me with a... let's just say very drab screen as a result.

~~~
redm
I thought the same thing, so I disabled f.lux and turned on Nightshift on Mac
OS. To my surprise, nothing happened. It turns out that it doesn't work with
my monitors for some reason. They are non-Apple and thus not supported. Back
to f.lux which works perfectly. Additionally, f.lux has more con-figurability,
it's easy to disable quickly if I need to for a short period, etc.

I personally prefer the OS doing less, but more stability and better, and
allowing me to customize through apps. I feel that over the last few years,
Mac OS has gone "wide" with features and has gotten less stable.

~~~
thesmok
> doesn't work with my monitors for some reason. They are non-Apple and thus
> not supported.

I've got a 2012 Mac Mini with Dell display connected over DP, and night shift
just works. So at least some non-Apple displays are supported. Not sure what's
the difference here.

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jedberg
The best tip I ever got (other than to use f.lux at all) was to set it to
5800K during the day. It's an almost unnoticeable difference, but makes a huge
improvement in reducing my eyestrain.

~~~
eikenberry
I've found the lower the value the better for reducing eyestrain. Slowly
lowering it down in about 100K chunks it doesn't take long to get used to each
step. I currently have mine at 4900/4200 (day/night).

~~~
r00fus
Why so high at night? I do fine with candle setting at 1900K (though I turn my
brightness up a notch from lowest).

~~~
eikenberry
The night value hasn't bothered me so I haven't given it much thought. I set
it to that value when I first started using it as lower just looked weird at
that time. I should probably try lower values at night and see if it effects
my sleep.

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cknight
Something I've been pondering recently: If there is broad acceptance of the
research, and sufficient industry agreement to justify programs like f.lux and
other night lights, should web developers like myself be more considerate as
to what colours we splash over our websites?

I ask this as someone whose most recent project is bathed in a deep blue
background, while posting on a site that is comfortably orange.

~~~
gkya
> should web developers like myself be more considerate as to what colours we
> splash over our websites?

Please please don't write grey on white. It's illegible. I have to ctrl+a all
the time. Black on white, like most books. Also take into account that the
user may disable websites picking their own fonts. I do this because I don't
want to download them fonts for no apparent reason and because it's usually
illegibly thin type. Thin type + #ddd color only helps in the process of
becoming blind.

Off topic: while at it, I wish pages used the first screenful for more
meaningful information.

~~~
sdfin
I don't know why this was downvoted. For people that have astigmatism grey on
white is not very pleasant for reading.

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IceDane
Windows 10 has this built-in now, and I use redshift on linux. I don't see how
f.lux is going to compete against Windows 10's built-in feature tbh.

~~~
srigi
With W10 you must enable location service to enable "sunset to sunrise". If
you keep LS disabled you can only mechanically set up & down times, which
slowly drifts by seasons.

With f.lux you can insert your location manually.

~~~
nkkollaw
What is the difference? You're still revealing where you are--although of
course if you enter it manually you can enter random coordinates in the same
timezone.

~~~
fenwick67
The difference is giving it to the F.lux team specifically vs giving it to MS
and other supported programs on your PC.

I'd rather just give it to F.lux. MS will use it to sell me Bing search
results.

~~~
nkkollaw
Ah, ok, it's a global setting.

I thought it was something like when websites ask for your location
temporarely.

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goodroot
Excellent! Great update. I run F.lux all the time, day or night. I recently
attempted to switch to Night Shift but it's much less effective.

May they manage to find a rewarding and stable business, they've done my eyes
and I an important service. Before F.lux, I had strained "computer eyes". It
was a drain on my energy and made me grumpy. It is no more.

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baxuz
I switched to ligthbulb in the meantime
([https://github.com/Tyrrrz/LightBulb](https://github.com/Tyrrrz/LightBulb))
Haven't really looked back, and I actually prefer it.

~~~
tofof
Thank goodness, I've been looking for a f.lux improvement that would actually
let me control exactly when and across what duration the shifts happen. The
f.lux developer is very stubborn about wanting it synchronized to sunrise and
sunset, regardless of any user preference or reason (third-shift work,
daylight saving time, working the same hours on June 20 and December 20, etc)
for any other use case.

~~~
nebabyte
> The f.lux developer is very stubborn about wanting it synchronized to
> sunrise and sunset, regardless of any user preference or reason (third-shift
> work, daylight saving time, working the same hours on June 20 and December
> 20, etc) for any other use case

Ohhh, this explains so much. I uninstalled for the same reason as you and
figured it was surprising the program shipped with such a locked-in scheduler
as the only option, when there would invariably be a fair bit of overlap
between people who'd like to manage their lighting and people who want more
custom setups than the incredibly constrained one offered.

I'll look into Lightbulb, I have a piecemeal self-rolled fix - which is
usually my favorite solution :P but still worth replacing with a maintained
app if one exists.

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adamdecaf
You can donate via PayPal off their install page.

[https://justgetflux.com/news/pages/welcome/](https://justgetflux.com/news/pages/welcome/)

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Analemma_
I have to assume that this burst of activity came because Apple and Microsoft
are both now just do what f.lux does in the OS (Apple fans will be familiar
with the term "getting Sherlocked"). Can't see how f.lux is going to survive
long-term, to be honest.

~~~
jedberg
I still use f.lux because it has way more options and control than the built
in Apple product. I wish I had it on my phone too, but I just suffer with
Night Shift instead.

~~~
overcast
Sorry, what exactly is causing you to "suffer"? It's an option to warm up the
color temperature on your screen.

~~~
jedberg
The lack of programmability, like I have with f.lux.

I can only make it come on and off at a certain time, and the color temp is
just a slider with no numbers.

With f.lux, I can have day, evening, and night, and it adjusts automatically
to my location. When I travel, I have to adjust the time on my phone.

All little things, but it shows how f.lux is polished and Night Shift is not.

~~~
overcast
Um, your time updates as you cross time zones on a cellular phone. Why would
you have to change Nightshift? 20:00 is 20:00 no matter where you are.

~~~
jedberg
Because time zones span ~15 degrees of longitude, and the sunset can be up to
one hour difference between each side of the time zone. Also, I move north and
south during my travels, which also changes sunset, and is not reflected in
the time zone.

~~~
overcast
Those are some very specific requirements then, you are indeed suffering, I
hope you find peace.

~~~
jedberg
My main gripe is that it only has a single color temp setting. I use three
with f.lux and it makes a huge difference. 5800K during the day, 3400K in the
evening (between sunset and 11pm) and 1900K after 11pm, until an hour after
sunrise.

My phone is jarring in the evening because it's way cooler than my display.

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gfodor
The fact that our eyes adapt so well to the light temperature change by flux
makes me wonder if there are other tricks we could be burning into operating
systems to reduce eye strain or other benefits for health just by applying
filters or alter treatments to the display. It seems like "health-oriented
graphics methods" is pretty uncharted territory.

~~~
kerbalspacepro
I'm pretty sure there are a whole host of color schemes that
apps/sites/terminals are supposed to use because they decrease eye stress.

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pinpeliponni
Does the Linux version work with Wayland already?

Edit: Apparently this is now built-in to Gnome 3.24+, using the name Night
Light. I am happy camper again!

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deft
Do I still need to set a location or can I just use timed based? Most annoying
part of flux...

~~~
kumaraman
Using location is more accurate as depending on how far away from the equator
you are light levels can change drastically.

This covers some of the details around it:
[http://www.ccfg.org.uk/conferences/downloads/P_Burgess.pdf](http://www.ccfg.org.uk/conferences/downloads/P_Burgess.pdf)

~~~
deft
I know the reasoning, I guess I'd just prefer to set it manually based on when
I'm actually using my machine. As in, near the end of my usage at night I want
it to be very orange no matter what the time is.

~~~
dagurp
I agree. I live in Iceland and during the summer months it does nothing.

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syphilis2
Very happy to see this, as I use f.lux less often than I'd like because of
some shortcomings (slowdown when transitioning, and lack of customization).
What I'd really like to see is direct and unbounded control over brightness
and red-shift separately. At night flux just doesn't go dim enough for me, and
the 1200k loses more contrast than I think it ought to.

~~~
syphilis2
I had a chance to try out the update at home and I'm happy with it. There's an
800K color temperature now that's accessible using the Alt+Shift+PgDown
shortcut, and many more dimming increments (Alt+PgDown). I'm at 800K and the
most dim it will go without entering "darkroom mode". I still wish I could
make it more dim, but this is a good improvement.

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drey08
This new interface is the most confusing UI yet.. Also, the update managed to
"forget" all my existing settings..

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Negative1
Is F.lux open source software? I don't see a link to source code on their site
and a quick web search didn't turn anything up. I wonder why they would lock
down development when they could get a lot of great community support (not
much to lose; it's free and they just ask for a $5 donation).

~~~
s3krit
Unfortunately not. However, there is an open-source project Redshift[1] that
I'm sure would be greatly welcoming of community support :). It also has a GTK
client, etc.

[1] [https://github.com/jonls/redshift](https://github.com/jonls/redshift)

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kylehotchkiss
I prefer OS X's nighttime mode. Except that it always forgets to turn off when
on Sunset to Sunrise mode.

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driverdan
I'm constantly surprised at how many designers use flux and its alternatives.
I can't stand the color shift and I'm not even a designer. How do you put up
with it?

~~~
egypturnash
I use the 'turn flux off for an hour' feature when I'm actually thinking about
colors in the evening. There's a lot of parts of the process where color
accuracy isn't important.

The fact that the color change makes drawing a little bit harder may also
serve as a gentle reminder to get the fuck off the computer and go to bed
instead of staying up until the wee hours of the morning.

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andyhnj
I love f.lux, but it disappeared from my work computer recently, and the f.lux
site is blocked on our network now. I'm not sure why we would have flagged the
program and/or site as bad. It seems like a pretty harmless utility to me, and
I don't recall there ever being any issues with it. Oh well. At least I can
still use it on my home PCs.

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reificator
I've been using this version on macOS for probably over a year now, I'm not
sure exactly how long.

I don't believe I opted into any betas, and I couldn't find a similar
featureset for Windows/Linux.

Still, good news for anyone running Windows/Linux, I'm actually going to go
update ASAP.

~~~
codefined
Yeah, I've had this version for a while on Linux. I believe it was just the
Windows build that was behind a few months.

~~~
reificator
Weird, I didn't have it available on Ubuntu whatever I use at work either...

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aorth
Looks like their appcast hasn't been updated for 4.0 yet. I'll wait for that
so I can install it with Homebrew.

[https://justgetflux.com/mac/macflux.xml](https://justgetflux.com/mac/macflux.xml)

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chairmanwow
Hue integration is one of the most interesting applications of IoT that I've
read about in a while. An entirely obvious application once I think about it,
but something I never thought about until now. Looking forward to trying that
out!

~~~
jffry
Looks like for now, Hue integration is only available in the Windows build:
[https://forum.justgetflux.com/topic/1912/f-lux-and-
philips-h...](https://forum.justgetflux.com/topic/1912/f-lux-and-philips-hue)

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daveFNbuck
Installing the last update was an awful experience for me. I was prompted to
update at night and during the upgrade f.lux turned off without warning and I
got blasted with brightness. I hope they handle this better in the future.

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graphitezepp
The supposed performance improvement is really the only thing I care about as
I am happy with the amount of red shift I currently have. It's nice they are
bothering to integrate more pro-sleep functionality for those who care though.

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yladiz
When I originally set up flux, it had the default night time colors _way_ too
orange, somewhere like 1900K. This made my eyes strain quite heavily and I had
to turn it up to a usable level. Has this been changed/fixed?

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lanius
>Better performance with games (no stutter)

Hopefully this fixes my main issue with f.lux. It seems to cause severe input
lag during transitions, making my Windows machine nearly unusable.

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dingo_bat
Have they added custom times yet? Last time somebody requested that feature
the dev basically told them to f themselves.

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JasonSage
When does the new version become available?

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colejohnson66
Now. Go to the homepage to download.

~~~
deagle50
The mac version is still the old one look like.

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koverda
Awesome!!! It works with my display adapter finally!

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slackoverflower
Was expecting them to announce a $5 monthly subscription to use the new
version too. Lol. "SOFTWARE SHOULD BE SUBSCRIPTION"

