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Comment by metafunctor | Hacker News Reader

One thing I find quite annoying about f.lux is that it doesn't just have a simple custom schedule setting. Night Shift has that, and it's great.

I live very far north. In the winter the sun is up for just a few hours, and in the summer it's down for just a few. Obviously, I don't want to follow the sun for my sleeping rhythm, and exactly nobody over here does.

Most of the time, I go to bed based on the clock. We use lots of artificial lighting in the winter, and window blinds in the summertime. I'd like to simply configure when I expect to go to bed, and possibly when I expect to wake up. With f.lux, I have to try to find a location on the globe where the sun matches my actual sleeping cycle, and hope that it stays that way (it doesn't).

I did notice that there's a new "far from the equator" setting in the latest version, but I don't understand what it does and how it's supposed to help. Just give me a schedule setting.

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well, the only thing I find quite annoying about f.lux is this butthurt brag we see every now and then. It's a nice tool, but their communication is slightly unprofessional.

To be honest, I'm not going to hold a "butthurt" brag here-and-there against them.

They've offered a revolutionary — one that can improve people's HEALTH° — software product at no cost to the consumer. The moment said product reaches peak market interest, one of the biggest companies in the world comes along and snatches it from them. (Disclosure: I don't know if there was a bid made, in which case my argument is weakened.)

So much for "Good artists copy, great artists steal"[0], eh... If you were the 'great artist' in this situation, I don't think you'd sit there without letting off a bit of steam via technically correct public information as to how your product is objectively better (at what it's supposed to do).

°How many software utility companies can say that?!

[0] - https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso

Would it have been for Flux possible to patent the idea given how many crazy patents there are out there?

I thought it was patent pending. But honestly, could they really fight Apple? I think Apple would win if only because of the vast amount of cash they have.

Saddens me how plutocratic the patent system is...

Um. The 'great artists' here, per your analogy, is Apple. And in fact that quote was popularized by Steve Jobs, in describing Apple's business model. The moment the Flux people sideloaded their app they should have seen this train coming down the track. They have nothing to whine about.

Oops! You're correct. Apple is indeed the 'great artist' here. I am aware Steve Jobs popularised the quote; hence why it was relevant.

Thanks for pointing out the flaw in my metaphor. Perhaps a better analogy would've been David v Goliath, but that is so intensely overused these days...

It's pretty understandable. Especially considering how that user came in asking how to uninstall because Apple tried to copy them too.

Using f.lux, you could select a location closer to the equator in the same timezone.

I just checked and mine thinks I'm in South Africa and I'm actually in Europe. No wonder my screen was darkening too early!

Edit: Added specificity.

Your edit commit message ("Added specificity") is really quite vague, which — ironically — is the opposite of the definition of specificity. ;)

I mean no harm with my comment; it's made in jest. Hope you don't mind...

This is my trick. Scheduling would be nice, but for now I just set my location based on the schedule I want instead of the one I live with.

Unfortunately, it's known to decide to change that back to your actual location. Happened quite a bit, it's been one of the more annoying problems.

> One thing I find quite annoying about f.lux is that it doesn't just have a simple custom schedule setting. Night Shift has that, and it's great.

redshift has that, and seems to be the popular alternative nowadays (on the desktop).

Yes, please give us the schedule feature, f.lux!

Use a cronjob (or your DE/OS's equivalent).

That will probably not work in the summer. f.lux won't turn on its effect until the sunset at midnight for example, even if you start it at 9pm (planning to go to sleep at 10pm).

I can manually set the time i go to sleep, playing with that setting moves around the "curve" of bright/dimmed light. I have set it so that flux thinks I wake up in the middle of the night, so it dims the screen in the early evening.

Personally I wont stop using f.lux, what I really like is that I can set custom colours and get a more orange screen even during daytime. I really like the softer colours, even when the sun is up.

That setting only exists on Macs last i checked so that is quite useless

I use a cronjob with redshift[0] and it works. You can set it to simply toggle the effect without any scheduling (`redshift -O 3400` to enable, `redshift -x` to disable). I have it set to enable at 9PM and disable the next morning when I open my laptop lid ;)

[0] http://jonls.dk/redshift/

macOS supports cron, but doesn't have a command line flux tool.

Ideally, I want a scheduled gradual sunset over one hour or so. I want it to work so that my eyes and brain have time to adjust, and I don't even notice the change, like a slow sunset. I don't see how I could do this with a cronjob and f.lux. Am I missing something?

For this reason, I actually used a patched version of Redshift back when I was on a Linux desktop. Now I'm on a Mac. I used to run f.lux, until Night Shift came out with the superior scheduling options.

I do believe in the "amount of blue-green light" argument from the f.lux guys, and would like to see a way to configure macOS to almost completely eliminate blue light, like f.lux does. If f.lux were to introduce a simple schedule option a'la Night Shift, I might switch back.

The problem with the sunset feature is if you're playing a game it absolutely destroys the FPS I get. Unfortunately I think the shortest interval is 20seconds, which is a pretty long time to be playing a competitive game that stutters.

Or use the alternative tool that he's talking about that supports his use case directly.

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