Black Light, Night Shift & Flux

Black Light and Night Shift are good friends.

Many users of Black Light also want to use Flux (or f.lux) to tint their screen in warmer colors at night. The problem is that you can’t use both apps at the same time: they each compete to take control of the screen’s gamma curve and the result is a unusable flashing screen alternating between the gamma settings of the two apps.

In yesterday’s 10.12.4 update, macOS Sierra added a Flux-like feature called Night Shift. The good new is that, unlike Flux, Night Shift works well with Black Light.

The mechanism used by Night Shift is different. It does not rely on the gamma curve, which is good as it’s not fighting with Black Light. This also makes it limited in the hardware it supports¹. After applying the update, you can check if your computer has the Night Shift tab in Apple Menu > System Preferences > Displays.

There remains only one small caveat: Night Shift combined with the “Invert Screen” filter will tint the screen light blue instead of the expected yellow-orange. Other filters will combine well with Night Shift.

Also of note: Gamma Control works with Night Shift too.