Some applications disable "Night Light" and it is not reenabled upon exiting application

[Steve Barcomb]

Some applications disable "Night Light" and it is not reenabled upon exiting application.

Examples:
Minecraft
Nvidia Settings
World of Warcraft via Wine.

You can go into settings and manually toggle "Night Light" off and back on in order to get the blue light reduction to take effect again.

Not all application/games will cause this. Rocket League, Civilization 5 are examples that do not.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 17.10
Package: gnome-control-center 1:3.26.1-0ubuntu4
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.13.0-16.19-generic 4.13.4
Uname: Linux 4.13.0-16-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.7-0ubuntu3.1
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Sun Oct 29 00:50:51 2017
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/gnome-control-center
InstallationDate: Installed on 2017-10-19 (9 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 17.10 "Artful Aardvark" - Release amd64 (20171018)
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gnome-control-center
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. The issue you are reporting is an upstream one and it would be nice if somebody having it could send the bug to the developers of the software by following the instructions at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME. If you have done so, please tell us the number of the upstream bug (or the link), so we can add a bugwatch that will inform us about its status. Thanks in advance.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

gnome-control-center is only a configuration interface and not an active service, it seems the issue there has probably to do with gnome-shell itself. Could be that a problem with the compositor giving direct rendering to those softwares and not going back to the right mode again later on. In any case sounds like an upstream issue

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Sounds like this might be tied to apps that disable the screensaver...?

An alternative (and expensive but much more accurate) way to reduce blue light is to calibrate your screen for a warmer (lower) colour temperature. You would need to get a colorometer though, like http://www.hughski.com/colorhug2.html

Another alternative (and cheaper) solution could be to google for ICC files (colour profiles) that other people have created for the same model screen/laptop as yours.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu.
Ubuntu 17.10 (artful) reached end-of-life on July 19, 2018.

See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

We appreciate that this bug may be old and you might not be interested in discussing it any more. But if you are then please upgrade to the latest Ubuntu version and re-test. If you then find the bug is still present in the newer Ubuntu version, please add a comment here telling us which new version it is in and change the bug status to Confirmed.

[Enrico L (elamperti)]

I can confirm this still happens on Ubuntu 18.04 and suggesting to buy a colorometer to tune the display temperature is like suggesting someone to get a car when their bike has a flat.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

That's true. Another free alternative is to look in Settings and install a "warmer" colour profile like "D65".

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Or D55/D50 rather, in Settings > Devices > Colour

The built-in colour profiles aren't accurate in an absolute way but they do let you change things in a relative sense. It seems like the system assumes the default colour temperature is around 6500K, so choosing D65 doesn't change anything (even though your monitor may be well above 8000K in reality). But choosing D50 or D55 will lower the colour temperature to something warmer (redder) like night light does.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[A Person (cupcakepup42)]

It happens on Ubuntu 19.04 as well

[Cristian Gheorghe Florescu (myset)]

Confirmed on my Ubuntu 18.04.3 to

[Alex Park (alexparkmz)]

It happens on Ubuntu 20.04 as well

[Seth Rotter (rotterseth)]

This happens on Fedora 36 Workstation as well. I think it's safe to say this is gnome-specific rather than distribution-specific. Something wrong specifically with gnome's builtin nightlight function or a backend service it uses.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Sounds like the "old" night light implementation in gnome-settings-daemon is losing track of the gamma state. Perhaps the new implementation (where it was rewritten and moved into mutter for GNOME 43) will solve it?