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Comment by btreecat | Hacker News Reader

Why not just start work on an android version?

From the FAQ [1]:

    > We have a version internally (it looks beautiful!)
    > but it requires a very complicated installation
    > process. We are working to simplify this and ship
    > f.lux to the Android OS as soon as possible.

I'd have thought Android users would generally be more willing to do this "very complicated installation" than iOS users would be to sideload with XCode, but there you go.

[1] https://justgetflux.com/faq.html

On Android we already have dimming/warming apps like Twilight. Why is f.lux any more complicated?

Twilight and Lux both contain naive implementations using a semitransparent overlay. The result of this that blacks and dark colors end up being brightened instead of left alone, as a proper color-temperature change would do. This looks bad on all screens, but especially so on AMOLED displays that support a true black.

Cf.lumen[1] is, I believe, the only Android app that can actually change the color temperature of the screen like f.lux can, but it requires root as well as installation of a special "driver" in order to do so. My guess would be that the "complicated install process" referenced by the f.lux devs is probably similar.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.chainfire.l...

Also that one: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mobi.pruss.Gal...

And Cyanogenmod has a built-in color temperature changer anyway.

> And Cyanogenmod has a built-in color temperature changer anyway.

Really? Cool! Where is it though? I just went through the settings and couldn't find anything but Display & Lights > Colour calibration, which just gives some R/G/B sliders (that don't even seem to do anything?) no colour temp, that I could find.

I believe if Lux has root access it changes its behaviour to also change the actual color temp rather than using an overlay.

It does if you install either a plugin specific to your device, or a plugin to use CF Lumen as its backend.

For reference, the most popular screen dimming/warming apps for Android:

- Lux (free/$3.80): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vito.lux

- Twilight (free/$2.99): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.urbandroid...

I have no idea. But the developers (of f.lux) seem to claim elsewhere that the existing solutions aren't 'solutions' at all; don't do it properly.

I can't speak for the truth of that though. I've used the aptly named "Blue Light Filter" which seems to work fine. CyanogenMod OS bundles something which seems okay too.

Twilight doesn't properly dim the whole screen, it leave the menu bar undimmed and is good but not great.

CyanogenMod also has a very nice feature which adjusts the colour cast of the screen based on both time of day and the colour of the light hitting the RGB sensor.

It's integrated in CM. Not flux, but something that works very well (as opposed to twilight for example). Too bad I had to switch to 11. Anyone know of a solution that would work for me?

I use 'Bluelight Filter' on my Nexus 7. It's.. somehow 'different' to CM's solution (which I have on a Wileyfox Swift) but seems fine.

I think you can pay to remove the spammy ads, but it's otherwise free.

There's already an Android version called Twilight and it's awesome.

Apparently that doesn't work. On current androids, you can't have proper "f.lux" without root.

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