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Save your eyes, start using f.lux

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Re: Save your eyes, start using f.lux

#201

Post by enraged_camel »

DanBC wrote: post #196
enraged_camel wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like any other bright light source (such as the Sun), the light coming from the monitor breaks down some of the melatonin that your body naturally produces. You may still become tired when using a computer and subsequently fall asleep, but the quality of that sleep will be adversely affected unless you account for reduced melatonin levels somehow (either via a program like f.lux, or with supplemental pills).

Melatonin is prescription only in the UK. So, go careful if you're travelling from US to UK with off the shelf sleep meds. I read some article that investigated melatonin supplements in the US. It said that because supplements aren't as heavily regulated you couldn't be certain which pills had melatonin or how much.

Actually, most brands will list the amount in milligrams on the bottle itself.

Re: Save your eyes, start using f.lux

#202

Post by abrowne »

krobertson wrote: post #191
jasonkester wrote: post #16

This thing gets a lot of love by a bunch of folks here, so I gave it a good half year of trying. But it's just too annoying. Around 5pm, your display turns pinkish orange and it becomes a lot harder to see anything. Code gets harder to read, colors display wrong, video just fades to black. None of the advertised happiness ensues. The second half-year it remained installed, my only interaction with it was to notice it…

I love f.lux, I just wish it was adjustable for that exact reason. It is winter, it gets dark out early... I don't want it to shift to night time mode at 5pm. I find myself hitting "disable for an hour" 1-2 times a day before I leave work. However, when I get home and get back on my system, then I'm ready for night time mode. I prefer the 20 second switch over so I know to turn it off fast. With the long transition,…

Maybe set it it for a time zone a couple hours behind your location?

Re: Save your eyes, start using f.lux

#203

Post by mheiler »

arohner wrote: post #150
herf wrote: post #131

Summary of feature requests so far: - default to a slower transition - support dimming too - Add an API - Sunset is fine, except in the winter Most of these are on our list but it is all good feedback!

I'd also request testing on multi-monitor setups. When plugging my MBP into an external display, sometimes flux transitions to the external monitor, sometimes it doesn't.

I have a color profiled MBP and also see unreliable transitions now and again. Opening System Preferences > Displays > Color and flipping two profiles back and forth fixes it.

Re: Save your eyes, start using f.lux

#205

Post by onethree »

jasonkester wrote: post #16

This thing gets a lot of love by a bunch of folks here, so I gave it a good half year of trying. But it's just too annoying. Around 5pm, your display turns pinkish orange and it becomes a lot harder to see anything. Code gets harder to read, colors display wrong, video just fades to black. None of the advertised happiness ensues. The second half-year it remained installed, my only interaction with it was to notice it…

for some reason it would continuously flick between on and off, even when i had it disabled, so i just gave up on it too

Re: Save your eyes, start using f.lux

#206

Post by ZoFreX »

nick_urban wrote: post #178
fredsted wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever Flux gets mentioned, there's two groups of people: 1: Doesn't understand it, hates the "wrong" colors. Can't get used to it. 2: Appreciates the candle-like colors, says it helps them sleep in the evening or relaxes their eyes. I wonder if there's some sort of genetic difference? Maybe some people just aren't sensitive to bright light in the evening?

I wonder if the two groups are 1. the ones who discovered the "Slow" setting in preferences, and 2. the ones who didn't. When the transition is set to Fast, I find it very jarring. When it's set to slow, I barely notice it.

It probably doesn't help that it has bugs. Sometimes my netbook will go through a horrifically jarring transition full of banding and a very obvious change in tone, it seems like sometimes flux gets a little stuck and then rapidly catches up.

Flux on my MBP is if anything even less predictable.

I also found when moving to my netbook to my MBP that I had to make very big changes to how much flux could change the colours - I have no idea what makes my previous settings so annoying on this computer, there's too many diferences between them to be sure.

On my MBP I completely ignore their recommended settings for lighting type. I picked the tone by adjusting the settings until it didn't feel like the light from my screen was physically attacking my eyes, which required a surprisingly small change in colour.

Re: Save your eyes, start using f.lux

#207

Post by deltaqueue »

tptacek wrote: post #159

Two (related) things about f.lux from my experience: 1. With only one exception I can think of, every instance of insomnia I've had in the last several years I can trace to not having f.lux enabled for some reason. 2. The reason that happens is that I often won't notice if f.lux dies for some reason, because I am so thoroughly used to it now. I was having real sleep trouble several years ago, and f.lux is part of a b…

As soon as I saw flux pop up on HN this was the first thing that came to mind. I've had trouble sleeping the past 3-4 nights and could not figure out why (no change in any other aspect of my life--diet, stress, workouts, relationships, caffeine, etc. have all been consistent). I routinely spend 2-3 hours reading, working, or watching documentaries right before I go to sleep, but this week when that time rolled around I was still wide awake for another 2-3 hours. Last night I was up until 4AM!

Sure enough, I forgot to turn F.lux back on after disabling it for some photo editing on Sunday, so while I don't have any proof this seems like a strong correlation echo'd by all of the existing research on Herf's website.

Re: Save your eyes, start using f.lux

#208

Post by jjcm »

Flux is a great first approach, but I think that something like this needs a lot more tweaking (on the hardware side as well) to become viable. The issue with flux is that it just creates a color overlay on your monitor - it doesn't actually reduce the brightness of your backlight. This is understandable because very few desktop monitors and video cards support dimming the backlight via software. This is tremendously annoying to me as a designer, because on one hand I would love to have my displays dim automatically to save my eyes (and more importantly, to save me time as I end up manually dimming each of my 3 monitors at home every night as I'm working; something that eats up a few minutes because I have to navigate through the annoying on-display menus) but sadly flux isn't an option because it reduces the dynamic contrast of the monitor as well as the number of possible colors that the display can output.

Flux works decent for reading/coding/web browsing/etc, but it needs access to the backlight levels to truly be fantastic.

Re: Save your eyes, start using f.lux

#209

Post by hmottestad »

I hated f.lux on my old MacBook with a TN panel, however on my retina MacBook with an IPS panel it's unnoticeable except when I look at another screen.

My neighbour has a MacBook Air with a TN panel, and when I put my computer next to his with f.lux on, his screen looks like a gradient from purple to green with yellow in the middle, while mine has a uniform warm feeling (not yellow at all).

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