Looking for a simple, time-based night color control

I used to be on KDE. It had night color control integrated.
Then I switched to XFCE, and it did not. So I installed Redshift.

Oops! Redshift requires location access so it can automatically set the color temperature based on the sun's position in the sky. Now it doesn't work when the network is deactivated. And on my system, I can't set it to redden/bluen based on the time only.

I go to AlternativeTo, to find an alternative. It looks like all of them do the same thing, or are discontinued.

Is that what everyone wants? Is that all that's out there? Just ""smart"" programs that access your location to automagically change the colors based on astronomical events?

Even on Windows you could set the night color control based on the time. Am I living in a backwards world where Linux uses the invasive complicated way and Windows uses the private simple way?

Is there a simple program out there that can set night color control with only the time, none of that other crap?

DeltaWingDragon OP ,
@DeltaWingDragon@sh.itjust.works avatar

Now I'm on Cinnamon. I am using QRedshift. It works, and I can set the time manually.

Lesson: Don't use redshift-gtk, use QRedshift!

bonegakrejg ,

I use Iris, its very simple.

NOOBMASTER ,

Those look like scummy pricing options...

bonegakrejg ,

Some of them are free.

TrickDacy ,

Am I living in a backwards world where Linux uses the invasive complicated way and Windows uses the private simple way?

No. Not at all. And judging by this thread, setting the location in the config file wasn't difficult to figure out for most people.

pastermil ,

I guess this may be a good feedback for Redshift.

nublug ,

i just have it set to always on. there's no reason you need the bluer light in the day and you get used to it. less eye strain is less eye strain.

sic_semper_tyrannis ,

Color accuracy is one reason to not have red shift on all the time

Cupcake1972 ,

that's the person that would like seeing the Need For Speed piss yellow filter 24/7

aleph , (edited )
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

Am I living in a backwards world where Linux uses the invasive complicated way and Windows uses the private simple way?

I mean, you chose xfce and that's a DE which makes you do everything the hard way anyway.

Both KDE and Gnome have the functionality you're looking for straight out of the box.

communism ,
@communism@lemmy.ml avatar

Yeah I've always entered my location manually for both redshift and gammastep (like redshift but for wayland) in a config file because these programs can never seem to auto-detect my location on any of the devices I've tried them on. You don't have to use your real location. Just put yourself in the correct hemisphere and continent and it'll probably be ok. If putting a location in the same approximate location as your country in a local text file is too much of a privacy concern to you, then so is setting your system's local time to your real timezone.

Sims ,

Can't you just look up your location and enter it your self in redshift config ? I did that a few years ago, and it worked fine.

Also Redshift can be controlled from the cli, so cron would work wonders.

https://www.mankier.com/1/redshift
https://scribe.rip/daniels-tech-world/how-to-adjust-screen-brightness-with-the-redshift-cli-de267dda2b8e

BillibusMaximus ,

I don't have an alternative program to suggest, but there are some workarounds for using redshift.

First, in the config file, you can set the location provider to manual, then specify a lat/lon and it will use that location in its time calculations. I do this on my laptop, and it works well except for when I cross multiple timezones - things are obviously off a bit.

Second, with the caveat that I haven't tried this, it looks like you can also manually set dawn/dusk times in the config, which sounds like what you're after.

See man 1 redshift for more info.

macattack ,

If you know how to write scripts in bash, that is an alternative way to trigger night mode/dark themes. You can use curl wttr.in to get your local sunrise/sunset, write a simple IF statement if the time is greater than sunset/sunrise and automate it via cron/systemD.

Alternatively, there are a few options floating around on GitHub iirc

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