What’s new in Black Light 3

Black Light 3 adds multiple effects configurations, new clipping (under- and over-exposure) and gamma shift effects, multi-screen supports (where an effect can be configured differently for each screen), inactivity support (with a special inactive state for effects), clock and sunset/sunrise activation of choosen effects, and effect activation based on the foreground app.

Many of the new features of Black Light 3 come from Black Light Pro, which has been discontinued. Black Light 3 is the successor to both Black Light 2 and Black Light Pro.

Detailed History

Version 3.0 (15 December 2023)

• New clipping setting: add an amount of overexposure or underexposure.

• New gamma shift setting: makes colors more washed out or more contrasty.

• Can now define many effects and switch from one to another.

• An effect applies to all screens, but the effect’s settings can be made different for each screen.

• Effects can now have special inactivity settings used either when the pointer is on a different screen or when the Mac is left idle for a while. You can define how inactivity works in Black Light settings.

• Timed Effects: set the time for an effect to activate automatically, or let Black Light track the sunrise or sunset time for you.

• App Effects: associate effects with apps and Black Light will use the choosen effect whenever the app is in the foreground.

• More hot keys: associate effects to hot keys and can change the current effect parameters using hot keys too.

• Black Light now use gradual transitions when switching effect. Time for transitions can be changed in Black Light settings.

Version 2.3.5 (25 April 2019)

• Reseting gamma curve more proactively on quit, instead of counting on macOS to do it for us. This does not change the behavior of the app but resolves a somewhat nebulous issue with video capture and/or playback with certain applications on particular hardware configurations.

Version 2.3.4 - App Store only (5 October 2018)

• Fixed an issue where a trial & registration window was showing up, which shouldn’t happen when the app is purchased from the App Store.

Version 2.3.3 (23 September 2018)

• Adding support for Dark mode in macOS Mojave.

• Save and restore effect can exchange effects with Black Light Pro.

• Reading the color profile directly instead of reading the current values in the screen display transfer table. This should avoid situations where the effect is applied twice after a screen reconfiguration.

• Black Light minimum system requirement is now macOS 10.7 Lion with a 64-bit processor.

Version 2.3.2 (7 March 2017)

• Fixed a crach that would occur in 2.3.1 when running on macOS 10.8 and earlier.

Black Light 2.3.1 (28 February 2017)

• Fixed an issue related to hot keys where Black Light could crash.

Black Light 2.3 (29 June 2016)

• It is now possible to save the visual effect settings in a file and restore it later.

Black Light 2.2 (2 December 2015)

• Added vividness slider for the color filter effect. Now you can make the screen slightly yellowish, rosy, etc. by controlling the white point.

Black Light 2.1 (14 Octobrer 2014)

• Can now toggle the effect individually for each screen.

• If you have more than one screen, can now toggle each screen from the menu behind the the dock menu or from the menu bar.

• Fixed an issue occurring after a restart or a login that would make Black Light inoperative until it was quit and reopened.

Black Light 2.0.1 (28 April 2014)

• Fixed an issue where some preferences would not work in the English version of the app.

• Restoring the app after a restart should now work properly.

Black Light 2.0 (18 December 2013)

• Can now set a global hotkey to toggle effect activation.

• With OS X 10.7 or later, can now hide dock icon and have a Black Light menu item on the right side of the menu bar.

• Fixed an issue where the color filter effect would not work properly on OS X 10.9 for some configurations.

Black Light 1.8.1 (September 18, 2013)

• Fixed a problem that would prevent Black Light from launching on OS X 10.6 and 10.7.

Black Light 1.8 (1 September 2013)

• Sandboxed and now availabile on the Mac App Store.

• There is a new option to disable Black Light’s effect when the screensaver is visible. This will work with most screensavers, but not with Black Light Screen Saver, ironically.

• The Hide Stripes effect is now called Overexposure. I should have done this earlier, it’s been a long time since OS X harbored striped backgrounds.

Black Light 1.7.1 (6 June 2010)

• Can now choose to apply effect to only one screen using preferences.

Black Light 1.7 (5 October 2009)

• Added HDTV luminance adjustment.

• Added continous effect application for when the gamma curve is changed by an external source (such as another application or a display waking from sleep).

• The screen saver is now working correctly with Mac OS 10.6 on a 64-bit Intel processor.

Black Light 1.6 (6 March 2006)

• Improved the inversion algorithm to respect the gamma correction curve in use on the screen. Previously the gamma correction was inverted when the colors were, the correction was applied in reverse and could make gray levels appear coloured.

• Added the color filter effect to the Black Light application.

• Black Light and its screen saver are universal binaries that can work nativly on Mac OS X for the Intel processor.

Black Light 1.5

• Changed the name: “Black Light” instead of “BlackLight”
• Minor changes to the icon
• Two new effects supported:
• Aqua stripes hiding
• Dimming of the screen
• Added preferences to control effect activation
• Added a menu under the dock icon
• New effects for the screen saver, and slightly redone others

BlackLight 1.1

• Support for more than one monitor
• Added a screen saver module

BlackLight 1.0

• Invert screen with a single click on BlackLight’s icon in the dock