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Night Colour in KDE: Small New Feature, Potentially Valuable in This 'Crisis Mode' Era



Video download link | md5sum 2a337fd2dd58bd8021c8db928783306b KDE's Night Colour Mode Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0



Summary: KDE has made it easier to change contrast/brightness/colours overnight; the above video shows all the existing options (available in experimental builds)

THESE days it has become fashionable to discuss how to lessen the burden of bills. Here in the UK, for instance, lowering brightness on a monitor can save quite a few pounds per month (certainly when dealing with multiple monitors; here we have 11). Powering them off is an option, but not when you actually wish to use them.



"This will probably roll out to more KDE/Plasma-based distros, turned on by default (or available in the panel by default), over time."Months ago I started turning off the monitors whilst away from keyboard (afk) in order to save energy -- or rather to lower our power bills. Working at night when there's sufficient contrast (ambiance late at night) is very common for home workers. There's some science regarding nocturnal computer work and the brightness impacts sleepiness (or potentially one's health). I've long been reading about all those colour shifts, but usually those aren't built into the desktop environment -- until now!

The above shows KDE's (Plasma) implementation, which can be found lurking around in recent builds of KDE Neon.

It should be noted, as a post-mortem-ish, upon recording and after recording I realised that screen capture in OBS does not capture the colour shifts, but that's OK. It's mostly about demonstrating the existing options and controls. These will probably evolve over time. Unlike some other new features or changes, in this one I've not found any bugs yet (nothing fatal anyway). This will probably roll out to more KDE/Plasma-based distros, turned on by default (or available in the panel by default), over time.

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