I was working late recently and realized I don’t have f.lux installed on this machine. Turns out getting it installed on ubuntu is actually a bit annoying and there isn’t a native port in the canonical packages, so I looked for an alternative.

Everyone talks about RedShift but a quick config-less setup was not easily found.

Here’s ultimately how I got it going fast:

# Install redshift.
sudo apt-get install redshift gtk-redshift geoclue

# If you don't have one already create a config folder.
mkdir -p ~/.config

In ~/.config create a file called redshift.conf and put the following inside:

; Global settings for redshift
[redshift]
; Set the day and night screen temperatures
temp-day=4500
temp-night=3500

; Enable/Disable a smooth transition between day and night
; 0 will cause a direct change from day to night screen temperature.
; 1 will gradually increase or decrease the screen temperature
transition=1

; Set the screen brightness. Default is 1.0
;brightness=0.8
; It is also possible to use different settings for day and night since version
; 1.8.
brightness-day=0.9
brightness-night=0.7
; Set the screen gamma (for all colors, or each color channel individually)
gamma=0.8
;gamma=0.8:0.7:0.8

; Set the location-provider. Type 'redshift -l list' to see possible values.
; The location provider settings are in a different section.
location-provider=geoclue2

; Set the adjustment-method: 'randr', 'vidmode'
; type 'redshift -m list' to see all possible values
; 'randr' is the preferred method, 'vidmode' is an older API
; but works in some cases when 'randr' does not.
; The adjustment method settings are in a different section.
adjustment-method=randr

; Configuration of the location-provider:
; type 'redshift -l PROVIDER:help' to see the settings
; ex: 'redshift -l manual:help'
[manual]
; set these values if you've set the location-provider to manual instead of
; geoclue
;lat=51.522698
;lon=-0.085358

; Configuration of the adjustment-method
; type 'redshift -m METHOD:help' to see the settings
; ex: 'redshift -m randr:help'

[randr]
screen=0

Now if you start it, it should work :)