Flux Brightens Up Your Day By Darkening Your Screen

Giles Turnbull ()

flux-20090219.jpg

Ooooh, now this is interesting. Flux solves a problem that I didn’t even realize I had.

It automatically adjusts your computer’s monitor brightness according to the time of day and likely lighting conditions. Most screens look fine during the morning hours, because they’re made to be BRIGHT like the day outside. But when you come back to them after dark, or even just as evening’s falling, they sear your eyes and you reach for the brightness controls.

Flux automates that. Tell it your location and the kind of lighting you normally work under, and it will do the rest. I like the way you set it up and forget about it after that – it will take care of everything without you having to think about it. My kind of software.

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9 comments »

About the author

gilest

Giles Turnbull is a freelance writer in England. He writes for the Press Association and The Morning News. He has a website you can ignore and a Twitter account you needn't follow.

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Posted in First impressions, Quickies, Reviews, Software, Top stories |

  • http://ballysvegas.net BallysVegas.net

    Nice app, thanks for sharing

  • Charles Lowndes

    This is brilliant, In the UK you got to use Latitude, but the effect of your eyes is startling, so much less strain immediately! love it.

  • Worth

    cool app, but for those of us with a new unibody macbook/MBP, doesn’t the ambient light sensor do the exact same thing, only dynamically? my screen adjusts automatically to real time lighting conditions – one of my favorite features of the new macbooks!

  • http://www.madboarder.com Jamie

    The Unibody MacBook Pro’s do this automagically already. They adjust to the ambient light like the keyboard does. It’s in System Preferences under Displays. I don’t think my old MacBook had this so it might be a Unibody only feature.

  • Steve

    Neat, but you could just turn on the light to even it out ;)

  • http://www.ryanwaddell.com Ryan

    Don’t the new Macbooks have something like this built in? Or am I imagining reading about that feature?

  • David Donato

    Seriously? Didn´t Apple put a sensor for that many, many years ago? I´m not sure if the iMac or the Mac Pro have it, but all laptops have automatic brightness control that works ok.

  • nora

    Actually it works great with the MBP sensor, which just changes brightness. This changes color! This means you can turn your brightness all the way up and it still looks good… not weird and bright blue at night!

  • Frank Zhao

    What happens if it’s a rainy day?