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Desktops (Apple) Operating Systems Apple Hardware

Apple is Bringing Night Shift Mode To Its Desktop OS (macrumors.com) 78

Apple is bringing Night Shift, a feature aimed at changing the tone of the display to better suit the eyes at different time of the day, to its desktop operating system. From a report: macOS Sierra 10.12.4, seeded to developers this morning, introduces a major new feature: Night Shift for the Mac. Night Shift can be toggled on and off using the new Night Shift switch located in the Today section of the Notification Center.
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Apple is Bringing Night Shift Mode To Its Desktop OS

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    Bye bye, fl.ux.

  • Courage! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ColdWetDog ( 752185 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2017 @11:34AM (#53735055) Homepage

    I suppose a good bit about this is that even the new MacBooks should have the horsepower to change the display color. Even if it has to calculate the time.

    Leading edge here. The future's so bright that you gotta wear shades.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Wow, a single trivial feature that is already implemented in countless utilities being added to an OS deserves a whole story? Must be a slow news day.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Because Apple just invented it.

      It's interesting that the negative effects of blue light seem to be accepted widely now. I've had glasses that cut blue light for years, but always assumed it was just a gimmick as few places outside of Japan were offering it and the research seemed to mostly be from the companies making the coatings.

    • Wow, a single trivial feature that is already implemented in countless utilities being added to an OS deserves a whole story? Must be a slow news day.

      And here I thought that Bias lighting was the better way to go....

      http://www.howtogeek.com/21346... [howtogeek.com]

  • by xxxJonBoyxxx ( 565205 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2017 @11:41AM (#53735113)
    >> major new feature: Night Shift for the Mac

    Quit dinking around, Apple. You're on the path to become the next Blackberry at the moment.
  • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2017 @11:45AM (#53735139)

    Now implement this in hardware with a light sensor instead of a switch the user has to push manually and you're almost as good as the notebook I just went and replaced with a newer model.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 25, 2017 @11:54AM (#53735213)

      A light sensor doesn't do... which btw Apple had in their computers to adjust display brightness since like forever.

      Nightshift is time dependent as it's only purpose is to elminate blue light at hours you should sleep.

    • Welcome to 2006 ( possibly earlier )
      The Macbook pro I bought in 2006 had a light sensor for the screen and the backlight for the keyboard as well.

      • Definitely earlier - they started doing this in the PowerBook G4 days when they first introduced the backlit keyboard. They had a light sensor under the speaker grilles.

  • by havardi ( 122062 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2017 @11:46AM (#53735147)

    I wonder how "creative" apps will handle this-- will they get an exemption from the red-shift policy, or a warning? What about clients? Should certain content be flagged as "color sensitive" and be displayed at a standard color profile despite the rest of the screen being red-shifted? I just spent a lot of time calibrating my displays with DisplayCal, dammit!

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Turn the feature off. Problem solved...

      • by havardi ( 122062 )

        If you notice. The point of red-shift policy is that it is a gradual change so you aren't supposed to notice it or worry about turning it on or off. Yes you can turn it off for your computer, but you can't turn it off for other people's computers who might be viewing your content.

        Yes, clients should be able to red-shift their stuff and I don't want Big Brother taking control and enforcing color profiles. At the same time some clients might want artwork to be displayed correctly, while normal/typical cont

    • A lot of "creative" have moved to windows as apple does not have pro hardware anymore.

  • Poor Apple. Once a leader, now a me-too.
  • ...how hard it is to find a (free) red-wash theme that I could install for my (android) phone for use after dark.

    The bright android screen (and even when dimmed, tends toward the blue-white color temp) is TERRIBLE for night vision.

    • by Trogre ( 513942 )

      The Night Filter app from Google Play works well for that. The Widget toggles every time you hit it.

      If you want a FOSS solution, Red Moon from the F-Droid repository works fairly well too.

      • Thank you - I've found Twilight does it now.

        Night Filter - like so many others - seems to only want to filter out the blue, leaving everything a yellow-tint which is fine but still negatively impacts night vision.

        Thanks!

        • by Trogre ( 513942 )

          You can set the RGB colour and brightness in Night Filter by tapping the name in the pull-down menu. I agree about the default colour being too yellow, so I fixed it myself.

  • by tlambert ( 566799 ) on Wednesday January 25, 2017 @12:29PM (#53735465)

    What would be even better would be... links to medline/NIH/NEJM/Lancet papers indicating that the changing of colors is anything other than snake oil being manufactured by the people who brought you "Blue Blockers" sunglasses.

    "Blue Blockers: For when you turn 50, take up golf, and wear white polyester pants pulled up to your armpits".

    I found 15 medline articles on the idea -- all concluding that thecolor changes don't do dick. The one really reliable study -- the one on Navy pilots -- concluded that the color change *increased* alertness. Good luck getting to sleep more easily with *increased alertness*. Luckily, the same study also indicated that the effect was very short term.

    • Here's a Scientific America article [scientificamerican.com] with neuroscientists who researched it. I don't have any decent journal access, but those names might be a good starting point.

      Even if it didn't have medical effects, I still like the visual effect. When I wake up in the middle of the night and pick up my phone to check the time, the normal daytime colors sear my retinas while the orange hues don't. Any potential health benefit is just a bonus.

    • Listen, if you're going to lie at least make up a believable number. Studies have shown people believe made up numbers ending in 1 and 7 more than the other eight numbers.

      So, if you had said you found 17 medline articles, I might have believed you.

      Link to study for confirmation:

      http://dilbert.com/strip/2008-... [dilbert.com]
    • I found 15 medline articles on the idea -- all concluding that thecolor changes don't do dick.

      We all expect 15 links now. After all, why would we take your word for it? You're just a name on the internet.

      Personally I switch my colour scheme because it's nice not having a skylight screen in an incandescent room. That colour change you are talking about affecting pilots? Well you're going to get that as a result of NOT changing the screen to match your environment, not as a result of changing it. If you're setting your screen to change colour 5 minutes before bed and expecting something positive, you'

    • Here's 3; the rest are, IMO, not citable, since they use weasel words, such as "may", "might", "could", "should be studied more thoroughly" -- although they do stop just short of "hey, give us a grant, our graduate students are starving, and can't think up anything original".

      "In the early phase of the sleep period, the amount of stage-4 sleep (S4-sleep) was significantly attenuated under the higher color temperature of 6700 K compared with the lower color temperature of 3000 K."

      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ [nih.gov]

      • In the early phase of the sleep period, the amount of stage-4 sleep (S4-sleep) was significantly attenuated under the higher color temperature of 6700 K compared with the lower color temperature of 3000 K."
        https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
        == color shift by fl.ux and others: bad for sleep

        No, this means f.lux is good for sleep. "Attenuated" means reduced. High color temperatures (i.e. not f.lux) reduced good sleep, compared to lower color temperatures (e.g. f.lux).

        "Melatonin concentrations after exposure to the blue-light goggle experimental condition were significantly reduced compared to the dark control and to the computer monitor only conditions. Although not statistically significant, the mean melatonin concentration after exposure to the computer monitor only was reduced slightly relative to the dark control condition."
        https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
        == color shift by fl.ux and others: bad for sleep

        No, this means f.lux is good for sleep. The "dark control condition" was the orange-tinted glasses, creating f.lux-like conditions. The "blue-light goggle" condition was a goggle that _added_ blue light, the opposite of f.lux. Read the abstract again.

        "After exposure to bright light of 3000 K but not at other color temperatures, the EEG alpha1 band ratio and the beta band ratio at 02:00 h were higher and lower, respectively, than that at 01:00 h. These findings indicated that lower color temperature bright light exposure during a night rest break led to a reduction of subjects' arousal level during the subsequent work."
        https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
        == color shift by fl.ux and others: bad for sleep

        No, this means f.lux is good for sleep. Lower color temperature (e.g. f.lux) made

        • I think you are failing to understand:

          "Attenuated S4" means you get less S4 sleep (the kind you need).

          "not statistically significant" -- removing the blue did nothing useful -- "exposure to the computer monitor only was reduced slightly relative to the dark control condition" -- the computer monitor putting out the blue light was the same as not having the thing on at all: blocking the blue did nothing useful.

          " lower color temperature bright light exposure during a night rest break led to a reduction of sub

          • I think you are failing to understand:

            "Attenuated S4" means you get less S4 sleep (the kind you need).

            Please read it again. It was the high 6700K color temperature (i.e. not f.lux) that reduced good sleep, while the 3000K color temperature (e.g. f.lux) increased good sleep. This means f.lux is good for sleep.

            "not statistically significant" -- removing the blue did nothing useful -- "exposure to the computer monitor only was reduced slightly relative to the dark control condition" -- the computer monitor putting out the blue light was the same as not having the thing on at all: blocking the blue did nothing useful.

            Granted that it wasn't statistically significant, perhaps due to a small sample size, but the measured effect was in the direction of f.lux (blocking blue light) being good for sleep. They emphatically did not find that f.lux was bad for sleep.

            " lower color temperature bright light exposure during a night rest break led to a reduction of subjects' arousal level during the subsequent work." -- you have to intentionally get up in the *middle* of a sleep cycle for there to be any effect; prior to a sleep cycle, there was no effect. This is basically "If you wake up in the middle of the night, you are less alert the next day". That's a big "duh".

            You are misunderstanding the experiment. The subjects wo

    • by Trogre ( 513942 )

      I won't cite any studies about sleep, but when I briefly turn off Redshift at night, my eyes hurt. Turn it back on, they stop hurting and I can read the screen much more easily..

      Conclusion: It does some good.

      YMMV

  • I mean really a feature named after a 1982 movie where a couple of morgue workers turn the place into a brothel.

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084412/ [imdb.com]

  • by JustNiz ( 692889 )

    >> Night Shift can be toggled on and off using the new Night Shift switch located in the Today section of the Notification Center.

    Rather than have to manually turn it on/off, it seems like the much better approach would be to use a light sensor, or at least link it to the clock so it knows when its day/night. I agree that it should be manually overrideable though.

    • >> Night Shift can be toggled on and off using the new Night Shift switch located in the Today section of the Notification Center.

      Rather than have to manually turn it on/off, it seems like the much better approach would be to use a light sensor, or at least link it to the clock so it knows when its day/night. I agree that it should be manually overrideable though.

      Look, I know it's not cool to read the article, but...from TFA: "In [the preferences pane], users can schedule Night Shift to come on at sunset and turn off at sunrise or set a custom Night Shift schedule." The manual toggle is just one way you can activate it.

  • ...and I just can't hide it.
  • I've been using f.lux on my desktops and also the apple nightshift feature on IOS. it acts as a reminder that i should start winding down for bed, rather than forgetting and just working through the night by mistake. While i can disable the function any time (e.g. working on colour photos), i have anecdotally been sleeping far better with orange-shifted, slightly dimmed screens, because i do know when it's time to sleep, and the colour shift happens over the period of a couple hours so i naturally taper o
  • For you Linux desktop and laptop users out there, you probably already know about Redshift. [jonls.dk] Automatically and gradually changes your screen brightness and hue based on lat / long and time of day.

    Have been using it for over five years now and it's amazing how much more relaxed I feel at night. Or, more succinctly, how much less my eyes bleed.

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