I use F.lux because they are the little guy, and first to this market by a long shot. Getting Sherlocked [1] by the big players after years of original work on a project is terrible. Lots of small businesses (or projects for that matter) is much preferable to a handful of large ones blatantly cloning ideas they did not originate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_(software)

Should OS makers not improve their OS based on what’s out there in the market, and purposefully harm the user experience then?

Night Shift is a simple concept and there’s not a huge amount of different ways to do it. It’s something I consider analogous to copy and paste, a trashcan, or a clock in your dock.

Every idea looks simple and obvious in hindsight.

When a small business has an idea it is their whole world. They think about it day and night and have to constantly improve upon it or die. A small idea can sustain a small business. A small idea to a large corporation though is a blip on the radar, and so has little incentive to continue being improved. This is now a tiny feature in a big company, mainly added for a keynote announcement and for marketing purposes, with little value to their bottom line down the road.

Prediction: Going forward I expect NightShift to improve at about the same rate as Finder.

F.lux was out for years before the big players finally realized what a good idea it was. It was copied without the slightest attribution or thank you. It may be legal, however not very ethical and rather dishonorable if you ask me. This path leads to a future where only big players exist. Invention by individuals is disincentivized if it will just get copied at the first sign of success.

Apple has taken ideas quite a bit. There's a term for it in the Mac world and in the iOS world they are infamous for "taking" tweaks done in the jailbreaking community. Rarely if ever is there any compensation or recognition given.

That's not right. Apple also many times doesn't not iterate as much as the independent developer would. But they do effectively kill off the small guy's work nonetheless.

That doesn't sit right with me.

Regarding ideas. People say that about so many things especially with features the big guys take. With hindsight it is done even more.

The chance of flux going away is much less than Apple suddenly deciding "We don't want to offer this feature anymore."

History suggests this is not correct.

Long-time Mac users have a term for this: Sherlocking[0]

It seems far more likely that a company without an obvious business plan might run out of money trying to sell software that seems to be an unnecessary duplication of features built in to the OS than for Apple to eliminate a feature they've only recently introduced and promoted.

I'm hoping neither happen, and I wish the f.lux team the best, but I definitely think you have the odds the wrong way around.

[0] https://carpeaqua.com/2013/10/18/stop-sherlocking-yourself/

Flux is on version 4 and has been around for a very long time. Dare I say a decade now? Apple probably barely cares about the feature. You think they're going to iterate on it close to as much as Flux? History certainly does not show that.

Also built into Gnome since 3.24: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/02/gnome-night-light-blue-li...

Yes, I’ve been happily using this feature since it was introduced.

Works brilliantly on Fedora.

I have been using f.lux for years, and was happy that when NightShift became available that I could just use it.

The short of it is that, for me at least, NightShift is almost useless. It simply does not get red or dim enough if I'm reading right before bed. Same thing goes for Android, which is why I have Twilight still installed there. Seems like such an easy option to make the color temperature more customizable, so I think it sucks that Apple didn't do this.

I've had better experience with CF.lumen on Android (you need root though) because it's more of a tint than an overlay, so blacks stay black and not dark red like with Twilight.

That's why I've always disliked Twilight! I couldn't put my finger on it, I thought it was just the color choice.

Thanks for the recommendation!

MacOS's feature at least is far weaker than Flux by a longshot. It doesn't tint the colors nearly enough. Sure the OS technically does what Flux does, but when the third Parth app is so much better, it makes sense to use it. Also Flux came out far before. And no thank you or notice has been given to them by the big guys. For that reason alone I'd continue to use Flux.

I must admit I stopped using f.lux when Windows 10 came with Night Light, however this update is making me reconsider. I really like the wake-up-time idea, as well as considering "early evening" a separate time interval for which a color temperature is stored.

It's also in GNOME3, or at least I think it is. I got it when I installed the GNOME group on arch via pacman.

Only the latest version include this feature.

If you use Windows 7 you have to go third-party.

The older iOS also doesn't have it.

Not for all models though. My 2010 MBP can't use Night Shift, for example.

My MBP 2010 works just fine with Night Shift.

Is that right? Apple's own website says it doesn't. Aside from that, I can confirm it doesn't show up as an option on my Mac.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207513

MacBook models from early 2015 or later

MacBook Air models from mid 2012 or later

MacBook Pro models from mid 2012 or later

So, what's the deal? How's it working on yours?

You're right, it doesn't. I thought it did, but it doesn't. Even uninstalled F.lux on it because I thought it would. Its my partner's laptop nowadays. I reinstalled F.lux on it. Thanks for the heads up

Ahh, gotcha. All good :)

> Night Shift requires macOS Sierra 10.12.4 [...]

Not everybody is on Sierra yet. My work laptop still runs El Capitan.

Curious; apart from not needing any of the new features in Sierra+, and not wanting to risk bricking your primary work machine, what’s preventing you from upgrading?

I have work to do at $dayjob and for that purpose the laptop works just fine. I don't want to risk any upgrade, especially after I heard that some tools and applications I use don't work well under High Sierra.

I guess the counter question is, why upgrade? I'm usually a version or two behind on Mac and iOS. The features added are usually minor. Never seems to be a reason to upgrade quickly.

And both of them work better than flux and have more customization options. There's literally no reason for flux to exist anymore.

Edit: also android and ios

I can't speak for the Windows implementation, but this is far from true on the Mac OS 'Nightshift' implementation. Nightshift won't get nearly as warm as I prefer it, misses the Hue integration, misses having multiple levels for particular times of the day, general quick disable, disable by application, disable when in full-screen application... The list goes on. There are plenty of reasons to still be using Flux on Mac.

> Nightshift won't get nearly as warm as I prefer it

Configurable in System Preferences -> Displays.

> general quick disable

There’s a toggle in the Notification Center, at the top (may have to scroll/pull down.)

>> Nightshift won't get nearly as warm as I prefer it

> Configurable in System Preferences -> Displays.

The whole problem is that it isn't configurable to get as warm as many people (myself included) prefer.

Nope nope nope. The built-in options still emit too much blue for my taste.

Tried to switch from Flux to Windows 10 nightlight, was awful. If you wake your computer from sleep after sunset, nightlight doesn’t activate automatically. Been a known issue since they released it.

Fixed in creator's update.

The only options in the Windows implementation are "colour temperature at night", "on time" and "off time". So that's objectively much less customizable than flux.

Android might have it, but Android users certainly don't. Nougat and Oreo combined are still under 20%.

Doesn't matter. OEMs have included it in MM too.

Don't know about other OEMs but Xiaomi's implementation is awful.

Oh. Mine doesn't, so I hadn't realize that.