Lux to stick around for many users. System Requirements. Night Shift is available on the following Macs running macOS 10.12.4 or later: MacBook. Mar 30, 2017 macOS Sierra’s Night Shift vs Flux: Which One Is Right for You? Posted by Khamosh Pathak on Mar 30, 2017 in How To, Mac Apps, Mac Tips Tricks, macOS, Top Stories Flux or f.lux, as the Apple fans like to say, has been Sherlocked.
Some of today’s LCD displays are so bright they can be uncomfortable to look at—especially at night. I’ve coveredbeyond the normal hardware and software controls, but most of these utilities focus on simply reducing brightness. As it turns out, there's more to display-viewing fatigue than brightness.If, like me, you tend to occasionally work (or play) in front of your computer late at night, you may find it difficult to sleep soon after. According to, part of the problem is that bright light—and especially bright light of particular color temperatures—keeps your brain from progressing through its normal “it’s getting later in the day, lets start winding down” process.
(This is the layman’s description, of course.) Thus, it should come as no surprise that looking at a computer display late at night—particularly when that display is calibrated to be bright and clear during the daytime—can be both visually irritating and a contributor to sleep problems.One treatment for people who have trouble getting to sleep at night is a purposeful evening shift from bright, higher-temperature (bluer) lighting to softer, lower-temperature (warmer/redder) lighting. Aims to mimic this natural transition on your computer’s screen.When you launch F.lux, it asks to use your location to determine the local times for sunrise and sunset. You then choose the type of nighttime lighting you use in the room hosting your computer: tungsten, halogen, fluorescent, or daylight (light that mimics sunlight). A Preview button shows you how the screen will look when dimmed for the chosen type of lighting—I recommend using the preview feature at night, in the target lighting, rather than during the day. (The developer says you should choose the setting that makes an onscreen document look “like the pages of a book under your room lights.”)After that simple setup, F.lux sits in the background, waiting for sunset. Once the sun starts to go down, the utility gradually—over the course of an hour—dims your screen and shifts its color temperature to match that of the type of lighting in the room. (You can opt for this change to happen quickly, but I find the hour-long transition to be much less jarring.) Similarly, if your computer is in use at sunrise, F.lux gradually brightens the screen and shifts its color temperature back to normal.I’ve definitely found my big, bright iMac screen to be more comfortable to look at late at night when using F.lux—the display simply “matches” the ambient lighting better.
And although I haven’t done any controlled experiments, it seems to me that I’m less wide-eyed and wired when I turn off the computer. It did take me a couple nights to get used to the different color balance of my F.lux-dimmed displays, though.When using F.lux, you can still adjust your display’s brightness separately if you find F.lux’s dimming to be too dramatic (or too limited). Unfortunately, you can’t fine-tune the specific temperature settings to better match the lighting of a particular room. Another limitation is that although F.lux’s systemwide menu lets you disable the utility for an hour—to do some work that requires color accuracy, or just to temporarily perk up when working on something especially tedious—there’s no way to adjust that period of time if, say, you plan to watch a movie for two hours. The workaround is to quit F.lux and relaunch it later.The F.lux Website notes that the developers are working on some of these minor issues. But even without those improvements, if you occasionally—or regularly—burn the midnight oil, F.lux makes those late nights easier on your eyes, and possibly on your sleep cycles.Want to stay up to date with the latest Gems? Sign up for the for a weekly e-mail summary of Gems reviews sent directly to your Inbox.
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Flux or f.lux, as the Apple fans like to say, has been Sherlocked. What Flux does, has now been rolled up into.
Which is bad news for Flux. Convention wisdom being that there’s no need for Flux anymore and it will die of obscurity.
But that’s almost never the case.Pocket didn’t die when Reading List came out. Apple’s implementation of a given third-party app usually just covers the basics. If you’re a pro user who needs pro features, you still have to go looking elsewhere.So in this case, how does Night Shift compare to Flux? Read on to find out. The Basics Are Same.
Both Night Shift and Flux have the same basic underlying features. You can turn the feature on manually, at a custom time or when the sun has set.
When activated, your screen gets an orange tint. It’s not recommended that you look at bright blue light at night, it can have negative effects on your sleep. This warm, orange tint helps deal with that. Both Night Shift and Flux let you specify just how warm you want the screen to get.By default, Flux starts warming up your display gradually.
It’s a nice soothing effect and sometimes you don’t even notice it. Night Shift also has this effect but the transition is not as smooth as it is with Flux.Read More: Flux Lets You Set Daytime, Sunset and Bedtime ColorsFlux gives you a lot more control over what your display will look like at various times. When you go into Preferences, you can specify the color temperature for daytime, sunset, and bedtime (which is 8 hours before your specified wake-up time).
Flux Lets You Disable Tint For Time Periods and Specific Apps. Unlike Night Shift, Flux lets you disable the tint for specific apps. So lets say you’ve opened up a video in VLC. Click on Flux’s menu bar icon, go to Disable - for “current app” and Flux will remember to turn itself off whenever you launch the app next time.From the same menu, you can also disable Flux for an hour, or till sunrise.
Flux Offers A Lot of Over The Top OptionsFlux gives you quick options as well. Click on the menu bar icon and select Options. From here you can enable fast transitions, turn off the backward clock, or disable Flux on weekends.Using Color Effects you can do some really cool stuff. Flux will automatically switch the OS to dark mode when Flux activates.
Movie Mode turns off Flux for 2 and a half hours. Darkroom option literally inverts the colors on screen. Night Shift Supports A Limited Selection of MacsNight Shift is only available on Macs running macOS Sierra 10.12.4. If you’re the kind of person who chooses to wait for a couple of months, or years, before upgrading to the latest OS, you’re going to miss out on the night shifting fun.
iMac (Late 2012 or later). Mac Pro (Late 2013)Flux on the other hand, doesn’t have limitations like this. You can use it even on your 8-year-old Mac Pro (godspeed), or on your year old Mac running El Capitan. Night Shift Doesn’t Suffer From Weird IssuesNight Shift is a built-in feature, implemented by Apple themselves. Flux is a third party app. It’s only been a couple of days but users are already reporting that Night Shift doesn’t suffer from weird coloration issues, especially when it comes to playing videos.Night Shift on macOS didn’t exhibit weirdness during video playback for me, like f.lux used to.— Rohan Naravane (@r0han).
Of course, not everyone faces these issues (I, for example, don’t). Should Flux Users Switch?If you’re using Flux and it works reliably for you, I don’t see a reason why you should switch. You won’t get time-related options for setting up the color temperature, or the myriad of pausing options.But if you’ve never used Flux, Night Shift can be a great way to dip your toes into the screen tinting world of late night productivity.
And when you think you want more features, just download Flux.Do you use Flux? Will you start using Night Shift instead? Share with us in the comments below.➤ Download:You may also like:.