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Black Light Pro — Color effects on a schedule
Black Light Pro lets you add visual effects on your screen to rest your eyes or to have fun. Setup your effects and switch when needed with a hotkey or at predetermined times, including sunrise or sunset.
Invert and make the screen all-red if you’re into astronomy. Tint with orange-yellow to help you sleep better, or blue to keep you awake.
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Chris Messina
Top Hunter
Hunter
It's like Night Shift on... steroids!
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When using this application, it appears to be impossible to tell which screen is which. When I have a laptop and two external displays connected, the application lists "Screen 1", "Screen 2", and "Screen 3", but there is no way to determine which screen corresponds with each number. If I select only two of the screens and apply an effect, the effect is applied to all three screens.
How do I apply effects to only one or two screens without affecting all three screens???
@magnuson You're making me realize this is much less intuitive than I though, so here's a small explanation:
1. each effect has its own associated set of screens.
2. clicking on an effect in the Preferences window will activate it on the associated screens.
So far, so good, but:
3. if you change the associated screens after selecting the effect, it won't automatically remove the effect on the deselected screens. I should probably fix that.
4. to make matters worse, clicking the checkbox to deactivate the effect will only do so on screens associated with the effect. This would not be a problem if not for (3).
So seeing the effect properly on the right screens currently requires a small dance toggling between an effect that applies to all screens and one that only applies to the screens you want. That's not good.
Thank you for the feedback, it'll be helpful. And let me know if you have other questions.
**Disclaimer**: I've used Black Light (the forerunner to this product!) for years now.
#Pro
It's stayed functional when others have broken during major OS changes. It can handle multiple displays and even plays nice with Magnet for Mac. Please believe, not every MacOS application does. I can click "please invert, apply this color" and not have to worry about funny keybindings (i.e., NegativeScreen)
#Con
It's disappointing that it still doesn't have a simple 'monochrome' option like the now-discontinued Blacktree Nocturne. I don't necessarily want all my colors inverted; I want BLACK and WHITE. Sometimes BLACK and WHITE with a red filter. As it stands, only the latter's possible in Black Light - in fact, as featured in many product screenshots. Good for late-night work, but not great when you want something monochromatic or in a particular color (think purple-on-black for Truman State "Spirit Fridays.")
#Take-Away:
The new "night-timer" is a lovely addition. I'll support a simple app that doesn't die when climbing High Sierra. I'd still recommend it with more enthusiasm given explicit monochrome (this-color-white, this-color-black).
@adamtenhouse I really really wish it was possible to do monochrome.
Most likely Nocture achieved that using private APIs in macOS to apply some built in CoreImage filters on transparent windows, and it's quite likely those APIs just disappeared since they were never really supported. Apple obviously has a way to do that internally since Monochrome is offered as an Accessibility option (and you can combine that option with Black Light or Black Light Pro if you want). But right now Apple offers no way for a macOS app to do monochrome. If that changes in the future, a monochrome filter is probably the first thing I'll add.
(Technically I can do monochrome, or any filter I can think of actually, using the technique I use in Sim Daltonism. But it's a bit laggy, and it's sucking a lot of energy from your battery while running. The bigger the filter window the worse it is so it's not really good for full screen.)
Thank you for the feedback.
@michel_fortin Thank you for the explanation. I'm sorry Apple hamstrings you like this! It's tough enough writing things using public documentation, then someone competes with completely opaque private calls ... yikes.
