f.lux: Adapt Your Screen to the Time of Day

If you suspect that using your computer, smartphone, or tablet before going to bed is affecting the quality of your sleep, or you find that the screen is too bright when you wake up, you might need a copy of f.lux, whose function is to adapt the screen to the time of day.

Trouble sleeping? In my case, always. Technology has its advantages, but it also brings some negative aspects, and one is lack of sleep. The developers of f.lux have a section dedicated to research on "blue light" on their official site. There we can find several articles explaining the effects of blue light emitted by computer, tablet, and smartphone screens. In summary, a person who reads on their tablet for a couple of hours before going to bed will (in theory) have their sleep delayed by about an hour.

What does f.lux do to avoid this?

The program only needs two references from the user: their location (based on coordinates), and the type of lighting they use at home during the night. Its operation focuses on automatically adapting the color temperature of the screen at the correct time of day, based on the hour. When there is sunlight, the screen has its normal temperature, without alterations, but as night approaches, f.lux applies a more "orange" tone, associated with a reduction in temperature.

The program has several lighting parameters, as well as an option to perform the transition quickly (20 seconds) or slowly (60 minutes). f.lux settings can be temporarily disabled in case the user needs to work with colors.

f.lux is compatible with Windows, Linux, OS X, iOS, and Android. The program works very well, but I have noticed a certain detail in the Windows version: the mouse pointer does not change. The official solution for this is to enable pointer shadows (Control Panel - Mouse - Pointer Options), but this can also cause problems in some Steam games, where the pointer simply disappears. Personally, I prefer to continue using f.lux and let the pointer keep its original temperature; it's not that big a deal.