Notifications
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So, if you wake up before your body has finished its nightly melatonin cycle, you'll feel absolutely awful. We don't know how much sleep someone needs, it's a very personal thing and even in the same person it can even vary between seasons. But everyone pretty much needs the same amount of darkness before they wake up because it takes a while to get through your nightly melatonin release cycle. (This happens each night when the lights go down, you can search "DLMO" if you're interested to read more.)
Our goal with f.lux is to remove alerting light at a good time for your body to begin releasing melatonin so that you'll have enough time to process it all. This can take around 10 - 12 hours. If you don't have enough darkness at night, say for example, you're reading late on a too-bright iPad, you're re-programming your body's natural sleep timing, so you'll be up later the next night, but you'll also feel awful the next morning because you woke up too soon.
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Thanks, I know! That's why I got you! But, precisely for that reason, when it's 11 pm, I don't want a message telling me when I'll be waking up, I want one that tells me how long I have till I go to sleep. Which for me is at midnight.
So what I am saying is to have a notification for that. Why do you need to be reminded when you're waking up? This is prep time to start the "nightly melatonin release cycle." The messages should reflect the light.
But great app, I love it, it calms me down. I have it on my laptops--need to put it on the ipad--can't stand to look at it at this time....
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Some people like it, some people don't.
You can turn it off under Options > uncheck Backwards Alarm Clock from the menu to the left of your system clock.
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You're not getting the point! It's not a question of what one likes, but what is appropriate for the time you are preparing to sleep. But anyway.
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Yes, I know what you're saying. But we want to leave people the option of listening to how their body feels rather than paying attention to what a clock says.
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But you're doing exactly that when you tell them what time they're waking up!!!!!! That'
Anyway, I had already disabled it....
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And can I give you a suggestion? If people take the pains to give suggestions, and you just blow them off, especially with reasoning that is not really sound, it puts people off. The apps that earn loyalty are the ones that keep tweaking to improve. I pay Busycal to have a tailored calendar and they've covered many of my suggestions, as I'm of course not sending trivial ones, but ones that others ask for too. tc
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@dab123 I'm sorry you feel that way. We listen very carefully to feedback.
For many people who are sleep deprived, wakeup time is a fact that can't be changed, and changing habits is very difficult. We spent a great deal of time thinking behind the feature, you can read more about it here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/flux-backwards-alarm-clock_55dde705e4b04ae497054a79
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Lorna, you have a great app, but I really recommend you read up on how to handle feedback. "I'm sorry you feel that way" called a non-apology apology and some consider it insulting. CHeck it on wikipedia.--I was not feeling anything, I was giving a suggestion.
And though I appreciate you've put a lot of thought in this, I do have to inform you not all human beings think the same or react the same. Some, like the makers of the app, like to know when they are supposed to be waking up. Others don't need that. They just need to wind down and need to know how long they have until they switch off. An app that also catered to customers rather than the inventors' needs would offer both options. tc
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Thanks for your feedback @dab123 :)
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The standard response, btw, is, thanks, we'll put this on the list and consider it when we upgrade.
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@dab123 you asked for the reason behind the feature, and I think I gave you that. It's a different use case than what you're asking about. Thanks also for your feedback on how to give feedback, and your instructions on how to write an apology, I'm sorry you felt that it wasn't a real apology!
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@dab123 welcome to the forum. Fyi, a quick search before posting would have found the same question and much "sound reasoning" - in addition to what Lorna has offered here - why your suggestion perhaps isn't as good as you think it is. There's no call for you to be expecting an apology.
Why can't I set the time I want to go to sleep, instead of the time to wake up?
The simple answer is that most people have a set time that they have to get up, and more flexibility about when they go to bed. So f.lux just doesn't have a fixed idea about "how long I have till I go to sleep". That's up to you.
If you want a regular alarm to tell you when to go to bed, there are literally hundreds of apps for that. F.lux takes a different and innovative approach, and they've put a lot of thought into it. As it says in the article, "We're trying to provide tools, not answers." If the tool doesn't work for you, use something else - you have plenty of options.
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@Elhem-Enohpi Thanks, I had not realized this was a cult, where only one set of preferences is valid--those of the 'innovators.'
And I was not expecting an apology! Just what normal customer reps usually say in response, thanks, we will add this to the list, if there is enough demand.
And btw, how you can possibly know what percentage of the population has "more flexibility about when they go to bed" is curious: most people I know, precisely because they have no flexibility about when to wake up, have to go to bed by a certain time, to be functional the next day.
The basic reasoning is sound: the natural expectation to wind down, at least for some humans, is thinking about when you need to go to sleep to switch off.
If "the innovative" way has only one way, well, many, those with NO flexibility when to go to sleep, will just turn the annoying feature off.
tc
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@dab123 I'm not a customer service rep, I'm the co-owner of the company.
We spend a lot of time studying how the population interacts with sleep and sleep timing, I bet I'd bore you to tears with the subject if we sat down together for a conversation. There are lots of directions we can go in the future, but our goal with this particular approach is to help people relearn how it feels to become tired, not based in clock time. We really do understand that not everyone likes every feature, and some things are bothersome to some people (that's why we put in options to disable things).
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@dab123 You're not a customer. F.lux is a generous gift from your neighbours Lorna and Michael. It's designed to help you naturally feel tired around the time you should go to bed, in order to get the appropriate amount of sleep. If your preference is to go to bed at a fixed time, you can. If you'd like to get a notification of when that time is, you can use your choice of alarm reminder apps. If you'd rather go to bed when you feel tired, you can. If you'd like to get a notification of how much sleep you'll get, normal reminder apps won't help. For that, f.lux provides the optional backwards alarm clock. So everyone is happy. Except you.
