Posted by Calixte Pictet | 5 comments
Linux App: Redshift
If you’re like me, you spend a good part of your nights in front of your computer, eyes striving to focus as the pale light burns your eyes. It’s even possible that you’re staying up late precisely because your computer-screen is keeping you awake. Well, stay late at night immersed in the gloomy shadows cast by your screen no more! Instead you can stay late at night and concentrate on other things, like tweaking you computer, searching for the latest viral video, or even getting some work done!
Redshift is a small app for your Linux machine that will change the color of your screen as the night falls. This is supposed to have several positive consequences: First of all, it removes the strain for your eyes, eliminating the outlandish white/blue glow from you screen to a light that your eyes can actually bear. Secondly, it will help you sleep at night, preparing your biological clock for nighttime if you ever decide to go to bed.
App and features
What does Redshift actually do? To put simply, Redshift adjusts your screen color temperature to something that is much more acceptable to your eyes. This color changes according to your surroundings so Redshift tweaks the color of your screen according to the position of the sun.
Here’s the explanation from Redshift’s site:
A different color temperature is set during night and daytime. During twilight and early morning, the color temperature transitions smoothly from night to daytime temperature to allow your eyes to slowly adapt. At night the color temperature should be set to match the lamps in your room. This is typically a low temperature at around 3000K-4000K (default is 3700K). During the day, the color temperature should match the light from outside, typically around 5500K-6500K (default is 5500K). The light has a higher temperature on an overcast day.
To know the sun’s position in your location, Redshift uses Gnome Panel’s Clock applet settings, which means it will be able to calculate the change in day lengths, daylight saving times, etc. or any other location that you have specified manually when launching the app.
When used in graphical mode, redshift has an icon that sits in the indicator applet on GNOME. Ubuntu users will be pleased to see that Redshift now used a “mono” icon that integrates well in the new Ubuntu theme.
Features
The feature list for Redshift is small. It’s well integrated to the GNOME (and Ubuntu) desktop, making good use of the new indicator as well as the clock applet, but it does not have many independent features. That’s positive in the sense that it never gets in your way, has a simple on/off switch and that’s it. nonetheless, it would be great to have more control on the app. Redshift’s default setting look a bit extreme. After a while, one gets used to it and it actually helps, but if you’ve just launched it everything seems a tad too red for a while. I recommend you to go on with your daily work untill you forget, but you may want to change the settings. Unfortunately, there’s no graphical tool to do this, and one’s only option is the command line.
Does it work?
Redshift is very efficient. I actually notice sleeping more easily after spending hours in front of my screen. That may be partly due to a psychological effect. What’s for certain is that it does relieve some strain from your eyes. I often got teary eyes when browsing the net for hours on end. Now I find that I can concentrate more on what I’m doing without my eyes feel as if they were burning. Redshift is efficient, and I’m not separating myself from it soon.
Installing and running Redshift
To install Redshift, you need to add the PPA first need to install the PPA to your system then to download the app. Simply copy and paste the two lines below in your terminal:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jonls/redshift-ppa
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install redshift
Now that the application is installed, you can launch the it by hitting F2 and typing “redshift.” to add your location manually, type “redshift -l” followed by your latitude and longitude (separated by a colon).
For example, if you live in New York*, type:
redshift -l 40.7:-73.9
There’s also a graphical mode that will add an indicator in your panel. All you need to do is type “gtk-”before the command, like this:
gtk-redshift -l #:#
If you travel a lot or if you just want to change your location without going to the command line, you can ignore the location setting while typing the command. Then, you should set your location the clock applet that’s located on the right of your top panel.
I recommend you to make redshift load on login so you won’t need to think about setting it up anymore. To do this, simply go to System > Preferences > Startup Applications and Add a new app with the same command that you used to launch it. Redshift will launch at next login.
For those who find Redshift a bit extreme, there’s a way to change the screen color temperature easily. The command-line is necessary, but it’s as simple as it can be and works right away. Just copy the code below and replace #night by your desired night-time temperature and #day for the daytime setting:
redshift -l [location] -t #night:#day
By default, the night temperature is set to 3700. You might try to start at 4200 and move up or down depending on what you feel about it. The higher you set it, the cooler it will become (and closer to your normal screen color). You can also adjust the gamma by adding -g #R:#G:#B where #R, #G and #B are the values for red, green and blue respectively. To view all your options, type redshift -h. Don’t forget to tell us what settings you use in the comments!
Contact the author via email
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*you can find your local coordinates at getlatlon.com
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