Adjust Brightness Using Flux?
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I use f.lux on my Mac and I have to say it's a great program. However, what would make it even better was if there was an option to decrease the screen brightness using f.lux. Shades works well for brightness, but not for changing the color temperature. As noted elsewhere on the forum and FAQ shades and f.lux do not work well together. I tried brightness slider which does work with f.lux but that program has a bunch of issues (ie seems to just put a dark window overtop of everything so screenshots are darkened, etc). I don't use my monitor hardware brightness because it makes a mean buzzing sound when it isn't at 100% brightness which is pretty much equivalent to staring at the sun..
Any ideas for software brightness solutions on Mac that are f.lux compatible?
Would be great if f.lux added a feature to decrease the brightness! I'd pay for that!
Thanks.
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@hurlbz said:
I don't use my monitor hardware brightness because it makes a mean buzzing sound when it isn't at 100% brightness which is pretty much equivalent to staring at the sun..
Use your monitor's hardware brightness, it's CCFL (cold cathode fluorescent lamp) and this is COMPLETELY normal. That's just what they do. Please stop wasting energy and reduce the monitors backlight intensitiy. You'll also get WAY better contrast doing this, instead of applying a black filter over everything, and the darker colors will ACTUALLY be darker.
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We'll add some good things to this in the future!
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No, there are no other solutions for you, if you've ruled out changing your backlight brightness or using an overlay app like Brightness slider or ScreenShade.
I'm curious to know how f.lux will address it in the future, whether it will be by adjusting the backlight or the pixels - or both?
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Was just thinking about the same thing! While Brightness Slider for Mac works fine it hasn't been adapted for El Capitan and has some GUI glitches. Would really love to see this feature integrated into f.lux because it's so much more pleasant to work at night with a "dimmer" screen.
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@lorna @f-lux-team - you mentioned something will be added in the future? Care to elaborate? :) Is there a timeline?
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I use an external monitor on my Macbook Pro, an LG Ultrawide 34UC98 via Thunderbolt connectivity. Great monitor. Unfortunately, OS X does not control the monitor brightness via the F1/F2 keys (or Ctrl-F1/F2), nor can it control Volume/Mute on the monitor.
I have experimented with a project ddcctl: DDC monitor controls for the OSX command line that uses the DDC standard to communicate with an external monitor. Well, it works! From the command line, I am able to adjust Brightness, Contrast, Volume, and Mute on the LG Thunderbolt monitor.
Just thought I would drop this into to the team at f.lux if they are not already aware of it. I'd love to have my external monitor brightness adjust with either ambient light or calculated sunset. Even better would be to allow supporting the standard keyboard Brightness, Volume, and Mute keys for us third-party external monitor users.
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@Bromeo does your solution work (while flux is running) for your external monitor? I am in a very similar situation to you.
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@hurlbz said:
@Bromeo does your solution work (while flux is running) for your external monitor? I am in a very similar situation to you.
Yes, it is completely independent of f.lux. Using ddcctl to send the monitor adjustment commands over the DDC protocol is the same as adjusting the monitor backlight brightness and contrast through the on-screen menu system of the monitor itself.
ddcctl is more of a proof-of-concept, if anything. It does require development experience to acquire the source via GitHub, build, and install. There are dire warnings that the app can crash your Mac. It uses deprecated / undocumented API calls. So, not all good news.
There is only a command-line interface to it with very simple parameters, like:
ddcctl -d 1 -b 50 -c 75
Which attempts to set Display #1's brightness (backlight) to 50%, and contrast to 75%. I also found the parameters for volume, mute, and input work on my LG monitor. In fact, adjusting volume via ddcctl brings up the mini on-screen display for volume as if I had reached up and adjusted it on the monitor itself.
As a side note, this LG monitor has various modes, including Reader that is similar to f.lux, but manually triggered.
For now I will probably just make a couple of shell scripts or an Apple Script to toggle day/night settings on this monitor... for my own sanity.
