Flux Timing

November 6th, 2014
ideas, tech
Apps that make your screen dimmer and redder at night are pretty useful. Blue light wakes you up, so you want to minimize it when you're going to sleep. Unfortunately, these apps default to following the sun while the people using them generally wake up after sunrise and go to bed long after sunset. At work I look around at 4:30pm and I see screens going red, but I doubt my coworkers want to start getting sleepy already. Our schedules are offset from the sun, and our technology should be too: things should shift red a couple hours before bed, and blue when it's time to wake up.

With Twilight (Android) I can just set the hours to dim, but with Flux (Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS) it just asks where you are. I can tell it I'm in a city that's west of where I am, but I don't want seasonal variation. Which is funny: matching sunrise and sunset for a location was probably a fun technical problem for the developers and I suspect they're proud they got it right, but it's not actually helpful if your life isn't tied to the sun.

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