Does Yosemite (or El Capitan) have the "Night Shift" feature that iOS has?
If not, is it planned? Are there alternatives? If so what?
MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.5), Retina (4th Logic Board)
No
16 replies
No, it's not currently available on the Mac. Nobody here can speculate on Apple's future plans. One alternative, which I have not used and cannot vouch for: https://justgetflux.com/.
This kind of product would be unlikely to follow the exact percentages of
local daylight, in the process of cycling the night screen brightness; some
of us who live where the actual daylight change is great from between
December 21st and June 21st then back again, may find it a novelty.
In a computer with automatically dimming keyboard, (portable) it could
be useful, if the bright or dim could relate to local ambient light sources.
{In the farther north, we see gains of up to 5 minutes a day or similar loss.}
Perhaps good if you ignore the outdoor world and hope to keep
an internal clock somewhat on target; and not use a sundial...! 😉
On iPhone and iPad it automatically sync's to the sunset and sunrise times. This would not have been hard to do from a development standpoint, sunset and sunrise times are published in many places. It also does more than just dim, all Apple devices have had auto-britness adjust for years. It changes the color temperature to mirror what early morning and late afternoon sunlight looks like. It works great on iPhone and iPad, it's a wonderful feature.
Send Apple feedback. They won't answer, but at least will know there is a problem. If enough people send feedback, it may get the problem solved sooner.
Feedback
From the aspect of supporting limited population areas with radically changing
amounts of daylight (per day, annually) the idea could be implemented yet I
doubt they'd actually roll-out a version based on US postal or region codes for
the sake of a few hundred users.
While I read about the feature and you've explained in a highlighted way what
amounts to the same thing in an over-view, I'd be surprised if the item would
actually work accurately using the US Naval Observatory Database (aligned
with local time zones or actual daylight; which is two hours different in summer)
for places like Alaska. Without an active local sensor in the device itself.
Here, we see a gain of time equaling up to a few hours a month, then a loss
of actual daylight; so this 'feature' would be a curiosity; like an automatic volume
control in an automobile, that turns up or down if the windows are open, etc.
In the course of ten days or so, we see an actual gain of about an hour, over
many weeks from December 21 through June 22, then a loss until Dec 21...
Winter daylight is under 6 hours, say in Anchorage; summer daylight is 19hr 20m.
Sounds like a nice toy, one that should be related to as such, IMHO. 😝
What in the world are you talking about?
FIrst, accurate location based sunrise and sunset times are available even in the weather app since years ago.
Second, the feature were talking about already exists on iPad and iPhone and it works perfectly.
Third, if for some unknown reason you don't believe Apple cqn automatically determine your sunrise and sunset times, you can manuall schedule the feature.
Fourth, in order for this feature to be beneficial it doesn't have to be perfectly synced to sunrise and sunset, it's fine just to approximate and have warmer color tones later in the day and at night rather than cool tones.
Your post doesnt make any sense.
Why do you think you need to relate an iDevice to the actual outdoor lumination?
Here, if you do that, the solar day varies way too much and so it wouldn't matter
anyway. The illogical consequence is near total nonsense from real world outdoor
daylight factor. Unless the device has a sensor, such as backlit keyboards do, for
proximity ambient illumination, the pragmatic user would simply set the display at
a low output to save the battery anyway. Sounds more like fad or fashion, instead.
...If I need to be amused or entertained, without paying more, I could begin by laughing now...
Your post doesn't make any sense. 😉
Neither Yosemite or El Capitan (or any Mac Operating System or Mac Device for that matter) have the ability to be able to function night shift... yet! Let's hope for it in the future! If the brightness is an issue at the moment, I would suggest you just turn it down.
Brightness is not a problem.
It is not just the light intensities it's the color temperature of the light output. All Apple devices have sensors for auto brightness adjustment and they have had them for a long time and they work well.
Of course a device can sync to the outdoor daylight as long as it knows when sunset and sunrise is. It can, it does and it works on iPad and iPhone... can't you read?
Besides the fact that this feature will work just as well in Alaska as it does anywhere else, even if it didn't, the vast majority of the world's population does not live somewhere where the daylight hours vary so much.
Here is a brief technical explanation: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/226127-night-shift-how-blue-light-impacts-sle ep-and-what-companies-like-apple-can-do-about-it
<Edited by Host>
For the Mac, one could get the https://justgetflux.com/ app and see if that means anything;
and part of my comment was about the feature of controlling color and brightness in Macs.
Since I've owned (repaired, restored, personally donated) over 400 Macs to various persons
and charity thrift stores, the vanity illumination was never a critical factor... Some people use
a bright screen as a means to help alleviate S.A.D. while others wear some shades and turn
on a full-spectrum or grow light to get their bio-rhythms going. And put a timer on their lamp
to get awakened when there's only 3 hours of daylight outdoors, etc.
{The LED lighting can be odd colors, mostly vehicle headlights that mess with eyes at night.}
Glad to see you are awake. At this hour (2:22 AM local time) I shouldn't be. Not for this... 😉
I was wondering that too. I actually made my own version by using the display color settings in System Preferences. I played around with it and got it to be a softer lighting, not so much blue like before. The only bummer is that I have to manually change it when my eyes start to strain. Hope this helps.
I wish they would add this already...
brsm1990 wrote:
I wish they would add this already...
Download Flux. The link has been given at least once in this thread.
Does Yosemite (or El Capitan) have the "Night Shift" feature that iOS has?