Why, WHY can't I just adjust the timers myself?
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@täystollo but, but, but.. f.lux is such a professional app and I really like its warm recommended colors. I don't know anything out there that's visually better on Windows 10.
f.lux v4 has some pretty cute preset options, and it offers quite a few more customization options than v3 already, I'm hopeful that you will one day allow us to set specific bedtimes and sunset durations in a more straightforward manner.
I know the whole sunset thing is f.lux's primary feature and wouldn't be surprised if you had a patent on it, but as the OP says, sunset is too variant this far north, and the sun's behind clouds 9 months of the year all day anyway. My health is therefore already screwed and I'm taking vitamin D for it. I need my screen to consistently go soft 3 hours before bedtime and warm 1 hour before bedtime, all four seasons of the year.
The only way I was able to get that setting for 23:00 bedtime here in Seattle was to:
- set location to Honolulu, HI (21N, 158W) in the middle of the pacific, further south so that my "soft" duration is hopefully more consistent year round and further west so that "sunset" doesn't start until 8 p.m. (my time).
- Adjust the wake time to fine tune the "soft" duration, later longer (pushes out bedtime), earlier shorter (pulls in bedtime). For 3 hrs at 158W, I set the wake time to 09:00.
- use Recommended Colors, but..
- ☰ > Adjust Day/Night together > Sunset at 2/3, Bedtime at 1/5
Without v4 I don't know how I'd do that, so thanks for that at least. Hope it helps.
Cheers!
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@arkadianriver that wake time in #2 should be 08:00, not 9, which would otherwise be a 12 p.m. bedtime.
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@lorna Why can't you just provide a schedule based option? What the OS provides isn't the same. I know for certain that Win 10's option is terrible by comparison.
Profanity aside, the OP makes a good point. What is the difficulty in providing the option for the many people (like myself) that haven't bothered to post because it'll likely just be ignored?
(I came here myself to complain that you guys keep changing how the application works w/o the option of doing things the old way. I likely won't bother posting again, though. It'll just fall on deaf ears.)
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I would also like an schedule so I could "set" when sun goes up and down since in the summer f.lux works wonderfully here in Finland when sunrise and sunset are reasonable, but at winter the sunrise is around 0900 and sunset is around 1500 and that makes this program pretty much worthless.
Here's a picture of the GUI
I'd like to set my sunrise to 0600 and sunset at 1900 without hunting for a location that has about similar timing every week.
Currently I just trigger "Disable until sunrise" and take it off around 1900, but it's pretty annoying to enable "Disable until sunrise" twice a day since I need to press it at morning (around 0630-0700) and during the day (around 1500) and then take it off at 1900.
-R
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LOL.. that picture is great. Oh, you just woke up, sorry, it's time to go to bed again. As if F.lux thins those in Finland are bears who need to hibernate in winter. :O)
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@arkadianriver said in Why, WHY can't I just adjust the timers myself?:
LOL.. that picture is great. Oh, you just woke up, sorry, it's time to go to bed again. As if F.lux thins those in Finland are bears who need to hibernate in winter. :O)
Yeah you're definitely gonna get some kind of winter depression from flux trying to steal even the last bits of light you're gonna get.
It's 1228 and oh look time to go to sleep soon. Reality is that I'm going to sleep at ~2300 hours and waking up at 0630
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As another Finn, I really hope this feedback gets serious consideration. If I went with the recommended settings, I would be spending my afternoons sitting in front of a bright blue light therapy lamp and an orange computer screen. It's absurd.
I don't know much about circadian research, but I can't help but doubt that basing the entire rhythm naively on sunrise and sunset, with no regard to how far apart they are, would be the recommended method. Surely the aim with f.lux isn't to induce daytime drowsiness and seasonal depression.
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The sun sets at around 3PM here today. It just doesn't work right during winter. This has to be the most requested feature that I've seen, it'd greatly improve usability for some folks and I just can't understand why it's not even considered :(
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I agree, i don't even
Graph is roughly as delerious as the one the Finn posted.
Having to gamble on if Western Sahara is even in the same timezone isn't good design.
-Norwegian living over the polar circle. -
There are so many people replying to this even on this forum asking the same thing, that I suggest you put this feature in the program
I do not like Windows 10, so I will not be using the options that operating systems are providing.
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@stalkerkun It is as delirious, you can check. Search "Market Square Turku" as your location and see for yourself (60.5°N, 22.3°E).
@lorna I currently have a Windows scheduled task that kills f.lux process at 0630 and starts it at 1900, but this is not very elegant solution
And for YOU, yes YOU reading this!
In case you want to do this all you need to do is write one .bat script and do two scheduled tasks.making the kill_flux.bat
- Open notepad
- type
taskkill /f /im flux.exe(taskkill: This tool is used to terminate tasks by process id (PID) or image name.) - save as > kill_flux.bat (remember to change filetype from .txt to All files)
scheduling jobs on windows.
- hit winkey and type scheduler, click task scheduler or hit enter (you should now see a task scheduler window)
- on the right click "create basic task" and follow thru the steps
- Give it a name (eg. Kill Flux) > press next
- Choose daily > next > set start time (in this case 0630) and repeat every [ 1 ] days > next
- "Start a program" > next > choose the kill_flux.bat that we made > next
- Click Finish
Now we have a task that kills f.lux daily at 0630 every day and now we need to make a basic task to start flux
- create new basic task
- name it > daily > time > start a program
- Program/script:
%localappdata%\FluxSoftware\Flux\flux.exe
and when they add the schedule functionality or when we get closer to summer you can disable or delete your tasks from here.
If you need help making a crontab job for Linux to do the same just let me know and I'll help you out.
short version of linux cronjob is start
crontab -ein console and type/insert to the bottom of the file:
30 6 * * * killall flux #this kills flux
0 19 * * * /path/to/flux #this starts flux
then if you are on nano hit ctrl + x; y; enter and if on VI type:wqif you have no idea how to use VI here's a cheat sheet.
-R
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Flux team: "We're terribly sorry but our app is only to be used the way we arbitrarily want you to use it regardless of whether or not it actually works or is at all functional. If you want an app that actually works properly, we might not be the right app for you."
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Rather than getting snarky at people who are providing a free app, simply find a workaround. The obvious one which will work for many people has even been described earlier in this thread, by arkadianriver - you lie to f.lux. Start with your real location, then move the latitude closer to the equator to reduce seasonal changes. Move the longitude if your personal "timezone" is offset from that of your location. If you can't make enough adjustments this way for the length of your personal daytime, try Mr_Rixa's scripting solution and put up with having no gentle transitions.
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@gld59 Thanks, yeah, what I said works.. and I also especially like @Mr_Rixa 's scheduled task idea. Perfect for the Finns, and even in addition to the changing locations method, because when I moved my wake time further in the future, f.lux is still in dim mode in the morning for an hour or so after I start up my computer when I'd rather be wide awake and bright!
So much snark snark snark, but I don't blame 'em. I remain hopeful because even though dev hasn't committed to when and if they'll add direct scheduling, they seem more receptive to the prospect now than in past comments I've seen. @lorna was very accomodating in her reply despite the apparent profanity in the OP's post when she said
If you would like to respond with the schedule you prefer, we'd be happy to help you work it out. We want to hear how people want to use the software, but we do not offer a clock-based scheduler at this time.
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The lack of manual timer adjustment isn't what bothers me, the problem is that the automatic adjustment is based on a wrong assumption and fundamentally broken. It's that the "recommended" settings can in fact be unhealthy. It's not good.
It's nice that there's a workaround or two, but if this is truly meant to be "software to make your life better", there shouldn't have to be any need for workarounds in the first place. In fact, if the software worked as it should, any kind of workarounds would make the experience worse instead of being viable suggestions on the forums. I don't really need manual adjustments, I want automatic adjustments that actually make f.lux do what it claims to do.
The automatic timer sends a clear message: just trust f.lux. To me it seems to be a point of pride for the development team. Nothing inherently wrong with that approach, it would be great if f.lux really knew the best and I could just relax, trusting this software is doing its best to make my life better. It's unfortunate that I can't do that right now. Apparently I have to lie to this software to prevent it from making my life worse.
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I suspect the only way for f.lux to be as automatic as you suggest would be if it was owned by Google - who else has access to enough of your life to know exactly what hours/timing would be best for you? :laughing: No matter how adjustable the software is, there has to be some measure of user setup. It would be better if f.lux had more settings built-in, but the developers' priorities are obviously centred on the most fundamental issues around human response to light, as well as interaction with the OS and other programs. If they had the resources to devote more time to it, perhaps we'd have more built-in settings.
Adjustment of day length is obviously very necessary for people living at your latitude, but doing that by changing latitude in the program is so trivial that I don't see the problem as anything more than a missing topic in the documentation. (As for my comment about lying to f.lux about location - perhaps a "softer" analogy is daylight saving. I live in Sydney, in south-eastern Australia - my "base" timezone is +10, but at this time of year (summer here) it's +11. It's as though this part of Australia has been picked up and dropped in the middle of the Tasman Sea (and I think of it like that so I remember which way round it works). :slight_smile: The analogy obviously works even more directly for those whose personal "daytime" is offset from their timezone.
And unless you are using your computer screen as a form of light therapy, I don't see how f.lux could make your life worse - if it's that annoying and you can't adjust it to suit you, exit and uninstall.
Edit: It sounds like f.lux doesn't meet your expectations - perhaps documentation etc needs to change to avoid giving people expectations which cannot be met.
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@gld59 said in Why, WHY can't I just adjust the timers myself?:
And unless you are using your computer screen as a form of light therapy, I don't see how f.lux could make your life worse - if it's that annoying and you can't adjust it to suit you, exit and uninstall.
Edit: It sounds like f.lux doesn't meet your expectations - perhaps documentation etc needs to change to avoid giving people expectations which cannot be met.
It's not that I'm specifically using the computer screen as light therapy, but that's actually close enough: dimming the screen for the most of the day when the amount of natural sunlight is already well below the recommended levels can't be healthy. During winter we need more blue light than normal and f.lux is doing the exact opposite. It was a play on the "software to make your life better" tagline, but what is doing the opposite of that if not making one's life worse? Well, I admit it does sound a bit standoffish.
Like I already said, the problem is not that I can't adjust it (even if it has to be via trickery), it's that this is what f.lux recommends. This is what f.lux thinks is good and apparently refuses to reconsider. You're exactly correct in that it does not meet my expectations. My expectation was that using f.lux improves the quality of my sleep cycles and, well, makes my life better. Without messing around with the settings and going explicitly against f.lux's core design, that expectation won't be met.
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The f.lux interface is customizable for almost every schedule. In every version of f.lux available now, you can control your sunset light levels and color temperature. That doesn't mean it's immediately obvious, but it is possible. The criticism of not enough documentation is absolutely fair, and it's on the to-do list. Until it's available, post the timing you want and are having trouble with, someone will try to help you.
Unfortunately, it goes beyond the scope of an internet forum to provide advice about treating medical conditions, and we've crossed into that territory in this thread. f.lux does not give medical advice.
Before I close this thread, I want to direct you to CET, the Center for Environmental Therapeutics, which specializes in this area. They offer excellent research-based information for both clinicians and patients: https://www.cet.org/
