How do I tell f.lux what my bedtime is?
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How do I tell f.lux what my bedtime is? There seems to be only one "preference" pane, andI can't see how to set bedtime.
I have macos sierra 10.12.6
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Unfortunately, you can't. You can only set when you wake up. IMHO, this is a huge downside to f.lux. It would nice to set bedtime and rise times, and thus have greater control of when the screen colours change.
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F.lux switches into bedtime mode 9 hours prior to your set wake up time.
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Yeah, but what's needed is the ability to set both when flux transitions to warmer evening and when it goes to cooler daytime.
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Yes, I got that. I am simply showing you how f.lux works so that you can control when bedtime mode starts.
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I believe the concept is for f.lux to nudge you toward healthy nights of sleep. It is easy to clear the effect if you are staying up late one night. You can also simply move your wake time out a bit past your actual wake time. But doing that or being allowed to adjust it so you can always sleep only 4-6 hours is defeating the purpose of the app.
You are getting sleeeepy........
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RickJohn57, I agree completely with you about f.lux helping us find and maintain a circadian rhythm. However, when I set my wake up time I want that time to be when f.lux changes over to daylight. Instead, it only uses the wake-up time for backwards alarm clock (which is a very strange way of saying "time to rise alert"). F.lux continues to use location sunrise time as the transition time to daylight colour. Of course, it's possible that I'm not understanding f.lux functionality correctly.
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Our schedule now is definitely better for people who are later than the sun, and we are working on a good solution for people who have to get up well before it (this is a lot of people during the winter).
There are some cases where turning off the daylight cycle entirely isn't so helpful also...but we're trying to get the math to work for every case. It is super complicated and varies throughout the year and also based on some properties of your own clock, but we're making progress.
But we think we are gonna crack it. :)
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Thanks for the input!
For guys like me who are already on solid circadian rhythms it would be helpful to be able to set bedtime and rise-time and then have f.lux transition based on that rather than location-based sunset/sunrise times.And yeah, like you say, latitude makes a huge difference. But, save for rare exceptions, I go to bed at 20:00-20:30 daily and rise at 04:30-05:00 no matter where in the world I am. For me, there's slight variation for season but not much anymore.
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@lllusion said in How do I tell f.lux what my bedtime is?:
RickJohn57, I agree completely with you about f.lux helping us find and maintain a circadian rhythm. However, when I set my wake up time I want that time to be when f.lux changes over to daylight. Instead, it only uses the wake-up time for backwards alarm clock (which is a very strange way of saying "time to rise alert"). F.lux continues to use location sunrise time as the transition time to daylight colour. Of course, it's possible that I'm not understanding f.lux functionality correctly.
It's not going to switch to sunrise/daytime mode if your wake-time is set to a time before your local sunrise time. As an extreme example, let's say your wake-time is set to midnight. At that time, f.lux will transition out of Bedtime mode and go into Night mode. I mean, not to be rude, but think about it.
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So the question is whether the goal of f.lux is to help people keep and maintain consistent circadian rhythms or match local sunrise/sunset? If the answer is the latter then this discussion is, perhaps, mute. But if there's an interest in the former then...
Sure, sunrise/sunset is the basis for all life on earth, but i) nature starts to waken prior to sunrise, ii) science tells us that consistent rhythms are most important (to help get LOTS of sleep) and maintain health, iii) yogis, saints, and sages have taught for centuries that rising prior to dawn helps our energy. What's more, we know that humans don't change circadian rhythms as much as nature can/does to match seasons (esp. with increased distance from the equator).
If MacOS Night Shift allowed app specific settings like f.lux does then I'd just use the OS feature.
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@lllusion I actually realized that there is no downside at all. If you wan't to change the bedtime setting, you just adjust the rise time accordingly. If what you wanted was the bed time to be moved 90 minutes earlier, you just adjust the rise time 90 minutes earlier. It has the same effect.
When I found it out, and wanted the bed time moved earlier by an hour, I changed the rise time from 5:45 am to 4:45 am and voila! the bed time was moved the one hour earlier that I was looking for.
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@lllusion - I think you are saying you don't really worry as much about the effects of screens on your circadian timing (or your habits are good enough that it all works out), and you want a visual cue to wind down and go offline. This is important -- behavior and sleep are so interrelated...you can stay up just because you're doing something interesting (not because your circadian clock is late).
But still, our major, big goal for f.lux is to help people gain some control over their circadian timing - so if you need to get up at 6AM every day of the year, the design of f.lux is to make that easier to do. This means every decision we make (e.g., which controls to put in the interface) is based on that goal.
I think the ideal lighting for your house or your screen in the winter is very different than how you do things in the summer, and that's not only because the sun is up longer. The reason is because your body reacts extremely differently at different times of the year. For instance, in the winter you have a much larger reaction to light you see at night than in the summer. (The sun isn't providing as much "morning light" to offset the light you see at night.) In some places, we have DST to account for this effect, but it isn't the same for every person, and we can fine-tune it by changing your light.
Also, your circadian clock is primarily responding to light from the sun -- this is why we have time zones, and why people actually wake up earlier on the eastern edge than the western one. So, you can't make circadian software that ignores the sun's timing and time of the year - at best you can adjust things while knowing what's going on outdoors. (And yes, our friends at 60 degrees from the equator who black out their windows sometimes when the sun is always up, they probably need way better manual controls...)
Separately, and somewhat off the circadian topic: we know that people stay up late for reasons that are not circadian at first, and these habits become circadian problems after enough time (e.g., if you sleep in until 11AM on a weekend, you miss all the early bright light that affects your clock). So we are always looking for better ways to make cues for you to go offline at the right time.
But to your original point: what we are doing with light can also include "oh look, it's getting late" - a conscious change, without considering at every minute how we're shifting your circadian clock - so we will keep thinking about how to do that better also.
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@herf said:
@lllusion - I think you are saying you don't really worry as much about the effects of screens on your circadian timing (or your habits are good enough that it all works out), and you want a visual cue to wind down and go offline. This is important -- behavior and sleep are so interrelated...you can stay up just because you're doing something interesting (not because your circadian clock is late).
Whoa, dude. That’s not at all what I’m saying. In fact, you make a major error in your assumption. My sleep hygiene is very important to me, and something I’m quite meticulous about. I’ve created routines to maintain every aspect of my pre-bed routine, timing, and environment; this includes screen time and colour.
@herf said:
But still, our major, big goal for f.lux is to help people gain some control over their circadian timing - so if you need to get up at 6AM every day of the year, the design of f.lux is to make that easier to do. This means every decision we make (e.g., which controls to put in the interface) is based on that goal.
So, the primary goal of f.lux is in regards to wake up time?
Personally, my primary goal surrounds maintaining the time I climb into bed. I then allow my body to dictate when it wakes—naturally, at the end of appropriate sleep cycle.
@herf said:
… Also, your circadian clock is primarily responding to light from the sun
Research is questioning this theory. Data is showing that it’s actually our microbiome that has the largest impact on our sleep cycles.
@herf said:
we are always looking for better ways to make cues for you to go offline at the right time.
For sure, cues are extremely helpful.
@herf said:
But to your original point: what we are doing with light can also include "oh look, it's getting late" - a conscious change, without considering at every minute how we're shifting your circadian clock - so we will keep thinking about how to do that better also.
This is a very good cue.
My point is that it’s the primary cue, and that the assumption that every night will have X-hours of sleep is the issue. For example, my bedtime is 20:00. My wind-down starts already at dinner (finishing at least 2 hours prior to bed). My choice of music quietens, I prepare the bedroom (dark, cool). Meditation is the last thing I do before going straight to bed. (Note: there are other aspects of my sleep hygiene that are divergent from the topic.) Then I sleep until the body wakes: sometimes this is 04:00, other times it’s 06:00. The variance is due to many things, not the least of which includes necessary recovery time from workouts, mental stressors (positive and negative), and other rhythms in life.Regardless of when I wake (and finish my morning routines) I want my screen to show daylight. Sure, one could argue that it might be better that my eyes get the same colour input from my screen at the same time daily, but, believe me, my microbiome and internal system knows exactly what hour it is in the morning, and when to activate. In the morning, when I do start the ‘screen time’ it means that it’s time for bluer light to enter the eyes.
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@lllusion said in How do I tell f.lux what my bedtime is?:
choice
For my routine, I make f.lux switch to orange starting around 7 pm if I want wake up time to be between 6 and 7 am. When sunrise is 5 am, I would make the color change start about 6 pm. My wind down involves listening to relaxing music.
I set my routine based on the the sunrise time. Some times the sunrise is ridiculously early, and others it is nice and late. When it is 5 am, my routine is forced to be as much as 2 hours earlier than the 7 am sunrise I like in winter.
