Subscribe
Sign in
Lunar 2.0 — Sync your monitor's brightness with your in-built display 🖥💡
Smarter controls and a new Adaptive algorithm for your external displays.
• the brightness/contrast can respond to the built-in light sensor readings
• use the brightness keys to adjust external monitor's brightness
39
Replies
charlie
So this is basically like Flux, right? Any information on why users should switch from that to this?
Share
@justcharlie It's completely different from Flux.
I think Flux adjusts the colors of what you see by fiddling with the GPU configuration. It also has a brightness setting that has nothing to do with the native brightness setting of the monitor's (the one you see in the OSD menu when you press the monitor's physical buttons). I'm not sure how it does it, but I think it just makes the pixels dimmer/darker.
Lunar on the other side adjusts the native brightness and contrast settings of the monitor using the DDC protocol. You can see that changing the brightness with Lunar will also be reflected in the monitor's OSD menu. This should give a more natural dimming.
So I guess you could use both f.lux and Lunar, as they do different things. F.lux can adjust the display color temperature, and Lunar can adapt your brightness and contrast based on the ambient light in your room.
That's how I'm using it right now, just that I'm using the native macOS Night Shift instead of f.lux.
@justcharlie @alin23 Just responding to this:
On the f.lux FAQ they state the following:
> Isn't this exactly the same as the Macbook ambient light sensor?
> No, though they do work together nicely. The ambient light sensor measures the brightness of the light in your room and adjusts the brightness of your screen based on that. f.lux changes the color of your screen and warms it up according to the type of light you're using and the time of day. f.lux doesn't use ambient brightness to adjust colors. You might be in a dark room with very cool light, you wouldn't really want your monitor to look warm, but you would want your display to look dimmer. We've found that when your screen colors match the color of your ambient light correctly, you don't need to adjust monitor brightness as much.
F.lux tries to change the warmth of the screen (how blue [cool] or red [warm] it is), in order for you to be able to fall asleep after using your computer late at night. In that sense, it's the same as the Android App "Twilight", which attempts to do the same thing, as well as Night Shift albeit a different feature set.
@justcharlie @derk_jan_karrenbeld Nice find!
Indeed, f.lux and native macOS adaptive brightness work very well together! ☀️
But for external monitors, if you have the brightness set to 90 for example, no matter how dark or warm you set the pixels, you're still getting pretty much the same amount of light in your eyes if the monitor brightness doesn't change. It also uses more electric energy. 🔋
With Lunar, your external monitors can save some energy and lower the strain on your eyes when the environment gets darker.
I have a pretty messy schedule, I work in the morning, noon and late at night with pauses in between. So I pretty much depend on the natural light and I would have to always adjust my monitors' brightness and contrast to be in sync with my Macbook built-in display. That's why I made Lunar, to let it do this for me 😏
@androidlove On Mac Mini, the Location mode and the Manual hotkeys should work as expected. But it doesn't have a built-in display or a light sensor so Sync mode can't work.
But I thought Sync mode would work normally on iMacs. Doesn't the iMac already have a light sensor? Also, are you trying to use Lunar on an iMac with another external display, or just with the built-in display of the iMac?
Is there a way you could add an incremental increase and decrease in the monitor's brightness just like the laptop screen? I want tighter controls over the changes in my monitor's brightness and this is seemingly quite possible. Maybe like alt+cmd+up/down that changes the monitor brightness would be amazing.
Upvoted, but...
This I like about it the most:
- It's free
- It's working as described
- Has clean UI
- Smooth and logical UX
- Manual/Location/Sync Modes
What I did not like, the settings out of the box...
I set the mode to manual to test it out and I used given shortcuts to increase/decrease the brightness/contrast. It all works but changing both and having contrast really high or really low, didn't make sense.
I saw the options for setting minimum and maximum contrast/brightness and after a quick setup modifications, I liked the way it works.
It's not really a con, it's just something to think about... Maybe add a default settings out of the box that works best for most of the people?
Also, I'd really love if you can make brightness keys working, when MacBook is in clamshell (closed-display) mode. Cause currently, the keys are not working and I had to use the shortcuts provided CMD + OPT + NUMBER.
I am using my MacBook in clamshell mode all of the time, unless I hit the road. So this feature might be perfect improvement, if you can make it.
Currently I'm using an "Monitor Control" app, to have my brightness and volume controlled on external screen, but it's buggy.
Pros:Everything it has, except...
Cons:Some settings
Thank you for the thorough review!
The default settings are what worked for me, I can't really know how other monitors are responding to these settings. That's why I added so many knobs.
I'll add some analytics in the next version to check what are the most used settings so that I can adjust the defaults based on what the users are using daily.
The brightness keys feature has been requested more than a few times, I'll start working on it tomorrow as I'm sure a lot will find it useful.
I'd like to hear about how you would see this feature working in regards to the min/max limits and sync/location mode. I'm not sure if I should respect those limits when manually adjusting brightness/contrast through keys. In Sync mode, the best way to do this without falling back to Manual mode is to let the keys adjust the offsets instead of the brightness itself.
@alin23 Thank you for the response. Yes, adding analytics to track the settings of each user, sounds like a good idea.
I'd suggest if you can make an option as a toggle where it could prevent changing the contrast when using brightness keys. I'd override min/max brightness when keys are being used, but contrast wouldn't be modified. If such thing is possible?
I usually leave my contrast on external screen at 75 and it's perfect for any brightness value, but within your app, allowing it to decrease contrast (min: 65, max: 75), along with brightness (min: 10, max: 90) is what works for me the best.
@alin23 Awesome, good luck!
I forgot to point out that you might also want to have the option "run on system start-up". Maybe somewhere in this popup panel: http://drop.dvl.sh/WuzMFO
Lunar 2.0 finally takes advantage of the built-in light sensor of my Macbook to bring adaptive brightness for the external displays.
Working in a room with a lot of natural light is much more enjoyable now!
Pros:Clean design, smart algorithm, useful hotkeys
Cons:None
@dus_karz It already works with Thunderbolt 3. Although if you use the LG UltraFine 5K, then that monitor needs a different approach because of the tight integration with macOS. I'm working on that right now, hopefully to be released this week.
@alin23 I have one display that is connected via hdmi-hdmi and one via hdmi-thunderbolt 3 adapter on my Mac mini. both are being detected on the app, but the secondary display (I've tried setting both as primary) will not adjust the brightness. Any reason why?
@dus_karz that is a problem with the HDMI to Thunderbolt 3 adapter. Some adapters and most of the hubs don't have pins for DDC or don't forward the DDC messages properly. I myself have a cheap HDMI to USB-C that has this problem and another one that works properly. Lunar can't do much about this, it is a hardware problem.
This app looks awesome. Unfortunately I'm unable to get it to work with my new Mac Mini and an HP Omen 27" monitor. I've tried two separate HDMI-HDMI cables, and I'm unable to adjust the brightness with either. Could it be that both cables are low-quality or that there is something with this particular monitor that is preventing this from working?
waaaaait a minute, does it actually control hardware brightness of external screen connected via hdmi?
Just AWESOME app. I didn't think it is possible. Love it.
Pros:Display brightness synced with my mac
Cons:Wish to have an option to bind external brightness with formula like B=my laptop-10%
@vladkorobov Thanks for the review!
About the cons, that option is already possible, but it might not be that obvious. That's what the Brightness Offset and Contrast Offset settings are for: https://imgur.com/MXkPrUY
The formula behind it is a bit more complex than `B - X%` but works kind of the same way. You can see how the brightness curve reacts to the offset here: https://www.desmos.com/calculato...
@alin23 oh, didn't get that with swipe and scroll. It kind of works but -50, -50, give a very little change for me.
@vladkorobov I set the limits to [-100, 90] and I adjusted the formula so that negative values have the same impact as positive values. You can get the new update (2.0.3) to take advantage of these changes ^_^
@alin23 Alin, thank you so much. Lunar is the most positive experience I have about a software in the last year.
Great Product. The UX is amazing...
Wanted to ask. I have a MBP 16" connected to a Thunderbolt Display and a Dell Monitor via usb c. However I have my MBP closed most of the time. I noticed that when I do close the lid the SYNC option turns off.
So I wanted to ask if it would be possible to be able to get the sync data from the Thunderbolt display as that has adaptive brightness based on ambient light. Same as the laptop display.
Also when i try and change the brightness in manual mode there seems to be no effect on the thunderbolt display. the OSD shows up and moves up and down but the display brightness stays the same.
I have no issues changing the brightness on the dell display.
hey guys, unfortunately it doesn't work for me. when i change the brightness on my macbook that is connected to my external monitor nothing happens (yes its on sync mode) someone who can help? :)
This app also configured my Dell 4K monitor automatically. Colors match almost perfectly my MacBook Pro's display. I'd be glad to pay for it.