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.
What are the odds we'd see a Linux update at some point in the future? I loved flux when I was running Windows, but at this point I'm fully off in Ubuntu land and haven't been had much luck getting flux to work right here. :(
I didn't like redshift as much when I tried it a year-ish ago. The version I tried made me enter all the GPS coordinates manually and I never felt like it achieved the same effect as well.
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.
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'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.
Often the creator does not have all that much control over how their work is consumed. (And I guess it's not worse than reading a novel in a loud room, in some sense.)
I cannot watch TV with any sort of motion smoothing enabled. When watching other people's TV's I usually offer to "fix" the image, but in the end most prefer it enabled.
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.
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.
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.
They still do in that they can automatically adjust brightness based on light environments. Just brightness / backlight setting though, not colors or anything. I have it turned off and have it set to the lowest, given how it's still too bright even if my room is pretty dark.
"Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title."
You misunderstand it. All of those things listed are "subject to the conditions and requirements of this title." The next few sections are about conditions and requirements. That's the important part.
...none of which would seem to apply. What's the prior art? It's defiantly non-obvious or someone would have done it decades ago - color screens have been around for a long time.
If you were thinking of something else, I kindly ask you to make a point, instead of asking me to prove a negative.
Color screens have been around a long time, but staring at them all day has only recently become common behavior. And the solution to a problem can be obvious even if the existence of the problem isn't obvious.
I would say that changing color temperature based on time of day (and location on the planet) as a means to reduce late-night eyestrain and fatigue is something non-obvious, yes. I never even thought about color temperature and the influence of it on your sleeping patterns (esp. late at night) until the guy behind f.lux came by.
is it so non-obvious that it requires the state guarantee decades-long monopoly to ensure f.lux can make a return on the significant research & development costs?
could we expect no more non-obvious apps like f.lux get made if the state doesn't guarantee decades-long monopoly?
You've changed the question from "is the invention non-obvious, in the sense that current law requires to grand a patent?" to "do you agree with current patent laws and the value of patents?"
interestingly, f.lux is also free, at least for me. i use it yet haven't paid a dime. so it doesn't exactly look like they're trying to make a profit.. and i'm glad for that.
> […] changing color temperature based on time of day […] to reduce late-night eyestrain and fatigue is something non-obvious
There are themes for text editors which have both a day and night version (and some users will without a doubt have setup cron to switch automatically).
There are also blue-blocking filters recommended to wear at night for improving your sleep rhythm.
Of course none of this means that the f.lux author can’t obtain a patent on something related to his software. The question is if it will hold up if later disputed.
Contextual color-temp changing is nothing new at all. Putting a GUI wrapper on it and publishing for two dominant consumer platforms is real innovation I guess.
F.lux is a very good program, but you'll note that the 'research' section of their own page indicates that they didn't come up with the concept itself, and once you understand that blue light exposure distorts circadian rhythms, this particular implementation becomes rather obvious.
Indeed, back when I used to develop on a Windows box I swore by f.lux. I was very disappointed when I discovered the state of their Linux version after making the switch. Redshift is definitely the best alternative.
It's pretty crappy (no autolocation, broken option processing, still barebones functionality). Doesn't seem actively developed, and definitely not trying to do better than redshift.
what I think is weird is with the command line tool (xflux) that once you start it, it tells you proc ID, and if you want to change the settings, you first have to kill the other process, or otherwise you get two xfluxes fighting over the colour adjustment, causing crazy disco flickering while the new one transitions.
I'd expect a tool like that to just tell the existing xflux process to change its settings.
Dual monitors (Lenovo L1951p and L194 on Thinkpad W510 here) seems to work fine, at least on the 24 hour preview (you have to click the sinusoidal wave).
if you're using redshift, there is apparently a bug in the calculation.
So for now, you should it use it as redshift -l 28.6100:77.2300 -t 6000:4800 -m vidmode
where the first two numbers are your current locations latitude and longitude.
Yes, I'm from Copenhagen and I grabbed Copenhagen's latitude and longitude from Wikipedia and rounded to 4 decimals. Perhaps I, too, should take a look in Street View…
Oh wow, wonderful discussion :) I recently got a bit more understanding of colour spaces and colour temperature[0] and this is good reading.
So how about that patents and innovation? If f.lux was somehow patented they couldn't do this, two people collaborating like this to make colour temperature adjustment even more accurate.
Isn't the point of patents to protect investment in research or something? What does it say the investment if two people are perfectly willing to do this research for free :)
[0] the articles on http://scratchapixel.com/lessons/3d-basic-lessons/ have been the clearest explanation on CIE and sRGB and where that horseshoe shape comes from and all those things. they also got a really great explanation of colour temp and black body radiation
Shame it doesn't really work so well here. It forms dark vertical stripes on the screen, making small text ugly and hard to read. Oh well, I'll just use my monitor's controls which allow lowering to 4000K.
>Movie mode. This setting warms up your display, but it preserves shadow detail, skintones, and sky colors better than f.lux’s typical colors. It lasts 2½ hours, which lets you watch most feature films
Colours perceived as "warmer" (yellows, reds etc) are produced at lower wavelength and therefore by a blackbody with lower temperature (hence colour temperature). F.lux is reducing the temperature, thus producing a "warmer" hue.
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.
I just installed it and tried your suggestion of dropping to 5900K. After about an hour I reverted to normal for a moment and was shocked by how harsh the light from screen was.
> Something that happens quite frequently is non-technical friends see my laptop at night and ask "why it is orange?"
This, very much; if you just have it on for a while, you don't notice it yourself. There was a time years ago when it would transition rather quickly so you could see when it turned on, but that's a setting you can turn off so it goes reeeeally smoothly. I hardly notice it now. Maybe sometimes when I turn on a game it will flicker back to normal for a little bit. But yeah, I hardly notice it (which is good), but others do. Funny.
Agreed. I've noticed a pretty significant improvement in my sleep patterns since I started using it. I used to have trouble "tearing myself away" from the computer at night, and I'd often stay up way too late just staring at my screen and not really doing much of anything—just sort of spinning my wheels. That rarely seems to happen any more.
f.lux is an awesome little thing I had installed for months. Then on the excitement of moving to a new place, I removed it. And I could stay awake thru the night again. So it wasn't old age after all. Now I will put it back again.
Bright blue light disturbs your natural sleepishness feeling (melatonin/etc), so the need to sleep is felt as, say, exhaustion which is different and comes later.
I use f.lux and think it's great. I recently started taking a small amount (~1.5mg) of melatonin after reading a post[0] by Gwern and the accompanying discussion on HN[1]. I find that taking it ~30 minutes before I want to go to bed makes it much, much easier to "tear myself away" from the computer, book, etc. and go to bed.
There's no need to donate; they'll start extracting cash from customers pretty soon!
f.lux is patent pending. If you make a cell phone, display, or other cool device, and want to talk about licensing f.lux? Email us: justgetflux@gmail.com
I have to say that I prefer the warmer color tones regardless of daytime and lighting, which is why I have f.lux always set to 5000K - unless I need accurate colors - and even warmer during the dark hours.
Otherwise and without f.lux I tend to get occasional headaches and my eyes fatigue after long days spent at the computer.
There's also the OS's color-calibration/color-profile generation utility, which will usually let you set both gamma and temperature however you like them.
I have tried using f.lux several times as it is a recurring theme on HN, but it just does not work for me. All it does is give everything a red tinge, but the light intensity remains the same. I feel like it is cooking my eyeballs and blurring my vision.
I have working alternatives now neither of which work well with multi-screens and neither of which are sophisticated as f.lux, but they do reduce the intensity of my screens which is what I want.
One is "Dimmer" which I use on my left screen and the other is the built in Nvidia tool to reduce brightness, contrast/gamma etc, which I use on my right screen. Pretty primitive but works for me.
That is the point; it's all about color temperature, and not about brightness. If you feel like you're cooking your eyeballs, perhaps your screen brightness is just too high.
It took me a while to get used to it - I found I had to start out with minimal settings and slowly turn them up. I find I can sleep much faster now with it.
f.lux only changes the color temperature and that is what I use it for. Changing the display brightness is easy: just use the brightness adjustment keys on the keyboard. I set my display brightness as low as possible, while still keeping the screen easy to read.
Try redshift instead, you can use it from the terminal. If you want it to change according to time of day use redshift -l lon:lat. i.e longitude and latitude of current position. But you can also use redshift -O to set a specific level. I often use redshift -O 3500
When my friends have asked "why is it orange?" I've launched into an explanation of how blue light at night is unnatural and causes insomnia. Somehow, I hadn't thought of just temporarily deactivating f.lux and letting them see for themselves!
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.
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.
I remember first looking at this, and thinking it was pretty stupid. I downloaded it out of curiousity and ran it on my work machine while doing a few late nights, and I noticed very quickly that my eyes were feeling a lot less tired near the end of a day than they usually were.
Now, I install it on every machine I use, and it's probably saved me a ton of (literal) headaches. I couldn't recommend it enough.
I used to use this but my issue was that I usually watch TV/Movies on my laptop before bed. I had to disable flux to do that which made it kind of pointless for me. During my time using it I never noticed any benefits (probably because, like I said, I turned it off late at night).
Why do you have to disable flux to do that? Try looking at your phone after using your fluxed(?) laptop for an hour or so. The blue will burn your eyes out...
Well, "Movie Mode" is not the same as "Disable f.lux". But are you saying that the only thing you do on your laptop after the sun goes down is watch movies?
Looked into movie mode - seems like what I'm looking for.
>> "But are you saying that the only thing you do on your laptop after the sun goes down is watch movies?"
No :) The reason I used flux was to help improve my sleep. I thought disabling flux for a couple of hours before bed (even if I used it during the previous dark hours) would negate the benefit. I'm not exactly sure if that's true but movie mode sounds like the solution.
I think it has made a difference for me. Since I started using it I've noticed that I don't have major trouble getting to sleep if I've just finished working on my laptop, which can be a problem for me.
Also, I have been turning the brightness right down on most of my non-flux devices (including my TV) because the light is harsh.
Why not use something like Calise[1], which dims the screen based a camera plugged in? Even if it's a desktop, plugging in a cheap webcam and pointing it at a wall/ceiling doesn't seem very onerous.
I wonder how it could work if done properly based on data such as cloud cover. One thing that annoyed me to no end on my TouchPad was the auto dimming based on ambient lighting. This would rapidly dim in and out as I sat on the bus trying to read an ebook as it would catch every shadow etc.
Twilight seems to get it wrong - all the blacks become red. (I think it does this by overlaying red on top of everything instead of doing real hue shifting)
Are there any other recommended mobile apps out there?
Hmm, I had noticed that the blacks become red, but I didn't think of it as "wrong". Despite that, I find it useful enough -- it still removes much of the blue light and makes my eyes feel better.
I would love to know about any better Android apps like this, though.
Lux can do a better job, if you also install the Nexus 4 plugin from the same developer. Of course, you'll need a Nexus 4. If you don't have one it still does the same sort of transparent overlay.
"Lux isn't your ordinary brightness app. It intelligently adjusts the brightness of your display based on the environment you're in. If you step into a dimly lit room, Lux will automatically lower the brightness of your display to make it not only comfortable to read, but to also preserve battery power."
Just yesterday I was in the office late and was struggling with the bright monitor in a dimming room. The reminder that this software exists comes at a very nice time of year for those north of the tropics.
Might not be what this piece of software was created, but could a similar technique be used for an opposite effect: waking up in the morning? There are morning lights available that send 10.000 lux light, could you get a monitor to do this instead? would it have the same effect as those lights?
I do believe f.lux also can increase (blue-shift) the color balance on your screen during the day; my setting goes up to 6500K. Not sure if that's higher than the normal color temperature though.
I'm not sure if it's light intensity or color, myself. I do know that Philips is doing a lot of research in the area. If you have a Philips light that can change color (or can get one), turn it up to bright blue in the morning, and a pleasant / warm red in the evening. That should help.
I for one wouldn't mind a shifting color setup at home. Maybe I'll buy myself one of those lights sometime. Right now I mainly have reddish lights (woo, Lidl), but also because I mainly have lights on in the evening. And I don't generally have issues waking up in the morning. At least not once I'm out of bed, :p.
An official Flux build exists for iOS, but you need to jailbreak. I used it before I upgraded to iOS 7 and it has been massively useful for me. It's the one thing I miss most from my jailbreak.
I would imagine it would have to be baked into the OS (if not jailbroken) as I presume you'd want it to affect the display and all applications. But I completely agree, I love f.lux on my computer. The only downside is I feel the need to sleep very quickly if I try and work at night :)
Every time I go to update to legit IO7 I think, oh yea, but F.lux. Apple seems inspired enough to bake the good jailbreaks in, except for this one essential (for me) tweak.
The Iphone was a revolutionary product and a great tool, but I'm pretty sure it's also responsible for millions of hours of lost sleep due to late night blue light. C'mon Apple start forward thinking again and let us have this as an accessibility option at least.
I send feedback every single time IOS gets an update, hope others will too.
Neon lights in an office? I'm used to neon in bars/pubs, but I haven't heard of neon being used for general purpose lighting. That sounds painful, neon lights are generally very harsh in my experience.
Neat. Flux has been one of my favorite tools for years. There have been times that I have had to use its "disable for an hour" function late at night and the sudden brightness change is actually painful. It's easy to forget just how bright monitors are.
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?
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.
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 :)
I know an update isn't available for OS X yet, but did anyone else get notified of an upgrade of their OS X version? The most recent OS X version of the Flux.app file says it was created Oct 4, 2013. I'm pretty sure this update has caused my Macbook Air to hang momentarily when trying to put it to sleep. Kind of annoying.
274 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 279 ms ] threadI was wondering why the version number on Mac still was 23.0 after the update.
i wish more devices, like tvs, had flux baked in.
If the mona lisa was painted in duo-chrome I might not be upset at viewing it under different temperatures.
I would if I had to look at it constantly for my job and entertainment and it had a bright blue backlight shining right into my eyes all the time, :p.
http://jonls.dk/redshift/
https://launchpad.net/redshift
> f.lux is patent pending. If you make a cell phone, display, or other cool device, and want to talk about licensing f.lux?
This is, in my book, real innovation.
"Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title."
If you were thinking of something else, I kindly ask you to make a point, instead of asking me to prove a negative.
I am not sure if f.lux is entirely non-obvious...
could we expect no more non-obvious apps like f.lux get made if the state doesn't guarantee decades-long monopoly?
There are themes for text editors which have both a day and night version (and some users will without a doubt have setup cron to switch automatically).
There are also blue-blocking filters recommended to wear at night for improving your sleep rhythm.
Of course none of this means that the f.lux author can’t obtain a patent on something related to his software. The question is if it will hold up if later disputed.
Update: Looks like there's no new Linux version as of yet.
I'd expect a tool like that to just tell the existing xflux process to change its settings.
ah well, tonight I'll give redshift a try.
where the first two numbers are your current locations latitude and longitude.
Ah, it's the Town Hall Square. :)
I'm on 12.04, so I'm sure I dont have a patched redshift.
Actually I experimented to find the ‘temperatures’ that looked the best with my monitor. Now I understand why I had to use that method.
So how about that patents and innovation? If f.lux was somehow patented they couldn't do this, two people collaborating like this to make colour temperature adjustment even more accurate.
Isn't the point of patents to protect investment in research or something? What does it say the investment if two people are perfectly willing to do this research for free :)
[0] the articles on http://scratchapixel.com/lessons/3d-basic-lessons/ have been the clearest explanation on CIE and sRGB and where that horseshoe shape comes from and all those things. they also got a really great explanation of colour temp and black body radiation
Now I'm just missing : "automatically disable if Photoshop is running" (I got caught a few times)
>Movie mode. This setting warms up your display, but it preserves shadow detail, skintones, and sky colors better than f.lux’s typical colors. It lasts 2½ hours, which lets you watch most feature films
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.
It anecdotally helps a lot with eye fatigue, even during the day.
Thanks, my eyeballs salute you!
This, very much; if you just have it on for a while, you don't notice it yourself. There was a time years ago when it would transition rather quickly so you could see when it turned on, but that's a setting you can turn off so it goes reeeeally smoothly. I hardly notice it now. Maybe sometimes when I turn on a game it will flicker back to normal for a little bit. But yeah, I hardly notice it (which is good), but others do. Funny.
Now, where the heck is the "Donate" button?
0. http://www.gwern.net/Melatonin 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6495358
There's no need to donate; they'll start extracting cash from customers pretty soon!
f.lux is patent pending. If you make a cell phone, display, or other cool device, and want to talk about licensing f.lux? Email us: justgetflux@gmail.com
Otherwise and without f.lux I tend to get occasional headaches and my eyes fatigue after long days spent at the computer.
I have working alternatives now neither of which work well with multi-screens and neither of which are sophisticated as f.lux, but they do reduce the intensity of my screens which is what I want.
One is "Dimmer" which I use on my left screen and the other is the built in Nvidia tool to reduce brightness, contrast/gamma etc, which I use on my right screen. Pretty primitive but works for me.
It doesn't work for me on Ubuntu for some reason, anyone got a similar experience?
When my friends have asked "why is it orange?" I've launched into an explanation of how blue light at night is unnatural and causes insomnia. Somehow, I hadn't thought of just temporarily deactivating f.lux and letting them see for themselves!
Will do next time.
In all seriousness though, I wonder if they install drivers?
Now, I install it on every machine I use, and it's probably saved me a ton of (literal) headaches. I couldn't recommend it enough.
Has anyone seen real benefits to using it?
>> "But are you saying that the only thing you do on your laptop after the sun goes down is watch movies?"
No :) The reason I used flux was to help improve my sleep. I thought disabling flux for a couple of hours before bed (even if I used it during the previous dark hours) would negate the benefit. I'm not exactly sure if that's true but movie mode sounds like the solution.
Also, I have been turning the brightness right down on most of my non-flux devices (including my TV) because the light is harsh.
[1] http://sourceforge.net/projects/calise/
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.urbandroid...
Are there any other recommended mobile apps out there?
I would love to know about any better Android apps like this, though.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vito.lux
"Lux isn't your ordinary brightness app. It intelligently adjusts the brightness of your display based on the environment you're in. If you step into a dimly lit room, Lux will automatically lower the brightness of your display to make it not only comfortable to read, but to also preserve battery power."
Fantastically wonderful app.
The cheap Dell monitors got quite small horizontal visibility angle. Additionally, the USB adapter doesn't seem to be supported.
A simple program but solves a common problem. My eyes are always shocked when i switch off flux for color intensive work.
I'm not sure if it's light intensity or color, myself. I do know that Philips is doing a lot of research in the area. If you have a Philips light that can change color (or can get one), turn it up to bright blue in the morning, and a pleasant / warm red in the evening. That should help.
I for one wouldn't mind a shifting color setup at home. Maybe I'll buy myself one of those lights sometime. Right now I mainly have reddish lights (woo, Lidl), but also because I mainly have lights on in the evening. And I don't generally have issues waking up in the morning. At least not once I'm out of bed, :p.
If you're not an ios developer, visit http://www.apple.com/feedback/
If Apple never hears from people who want this (and they don't) nothing will get done.
I send feedback every single time IOS gets an update, hope others will too.
I'm in an office with bright neon lights, does it still help?
Would lowering the blue light in the TV's picture settings and the brightness accomplish everything f.lux does?
At night (up with a sick kid) the feature is great and you couldn't imagine watching TV at night without it.
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 :)