Hacker News Reader

Comment by rafd | Hacker News Reader

For your desktop/laptop, F.lux adjusts your screen color in the evening: http://www.stereopsis.com/flux/

(added bonus: gets rid of the eerie blue glow when you Skype at night)

I started using this at the recommendation of HN. It has literally been lifechanging for me. I now get up willingly and into productive mode before 9 AM better than 3 days a week, which is approximately how many days I willingly accomplished that between middle school and this summer.

Thanks for your comment Patrick! I know from your comments here that you wouldn't take any product and recommend it lightly so I took your word for it and just installed it.

Well, this is a weird transition for now! My screen is all yellow-ish and it doesn't feel quite right. I'll get used to it but at first, this is surprising.

edit: I should add that, though it does look and feel odd for now, it looks softer on the eyes already. It also seems to accentuate the difference of brightness depending on the angle of the screen on my MacBook. So if I type on my lap, my laptop bounces a bit and the variation in brightness is more noticeable.

I literally cannot tell it is running anymore, particularly for days where I am on the computer continuously. Sometimes if I turn on the machine for the first time late the flash of yellow reminds me this was not the way it always worked, but that is about it.

You will get used to it and if you're ever up before dawn and see it change to blue again you'll be even more weirded out. The hardest part is explaining to other people, but even they've stopped noticing.

PS And yes, it lets me get tired at night easier. I physically notice if I disable it for a game or movie.

How long have you been using it?

Discovering F.lux (via a previous HN thread) has had a dramatically beneficial effect on my life.

Before discovering it I would have difficulty falling asleep 3 or 4 nights a week. Now that hardly ever happens -- perhaps once every two weeks.

I would use F.lux if I could figure out a way to use it and also have my monitor properly gamma corrected (at least during the day), sadly that doesn't seem to be an option.

Yep, I would also post a link to this had I not had two problems with it:

- they don't share source code and provide a binary only

- their binary fails with an error on my linux box.

There's an open-source alternative, Redshift, that does something similar: http://jonls.dk/redshift/

There's a fork of Redshfit, RedshiftGUI, which gives you a GUI if you want one: http://www.mao-yu.com/projects/redshiftgui/

I don't use either, but I've seen the former recommended, and the latter came up a few times while I was searching around to remember what its name was.

I use this on all of my machines (Win/Mac) and it's fantastic. Great little app.

I wish the iPad supported something similar.

Not to be just a me too but to attract further attention to it I love F.lux.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com