Redshift for Awesome WM

This is a tiny Lua library to interface the Awesome window manager with redshift, a program that dims the screen to make it easier on your eyes, especially at night.

What makes this any more useful than gtk-redshift, you might ask? Well, it offers the following features:

• Integration with awesome via lua wrapper functions. Toggling redshift with a keyboard shortcut? Automatically undimming the screen when launching the photo editor? Now anything is possible.

• Support for multiple monitor setups that don't use xrandr. If you're multiheading graphics cards, this is a must-have.

• Automatic, periodic brightness adjustments. (Well, redshift offers this out of the box, but it's worth mentioning the library takes care of this for you.)

The design of this library follows the KISS principle. It comes with convenient wrapper functions to do the dirty work for you. It's up to you to program your own keybindings, bells, and whistles.

Install

First, you need to install redshift and set up a configuration file to help determine your location:

; ~/.config/redshift.conf
[redshift]
temp-day=6500K
temp-night=5000
transition=1
;gamma=0.8:0.7:0.8
gamma=1.000:1.000:1.000
;location-provider=geoclue
location-provider=manual
adjustment-method=vidmode
;brightness=1.0:0.5

; The location provider and adjustment method settings
; are in their own sections.
; This is an example lat long for Västerås, Sweden
[manual]
lat=59.61617
lon=16.55276

; In this example screen 1 is adjusted by vidmode. Note
; that the numbering starts from 0, so this is actually
; the second screen.
;[vidmode]
;screen=1

Second, in your awesome configuration directory:

    cd ~/.config/awesome/
    git clone git://github.com/troglobit/awesome-redshift.git redshift

In your rc.lua:

    local redshift = require("redshift")

    -- set binary path (optional)
    redshift.redshift = "/usr/bin/redshift"
    -- set additional redshift arguments (optional)
    redshift.options = "-c ~/.config/redshift.conf"
    -- 1 for dim, 0 for not dimmed
    redshift.init(1)

Usage

Done! Now you have these functions at your disposal:

• redshift.dim()
• redshift.undim()
• redshift.toggle()

They're pretty self-explanatory ... but here's an example for your rc.lua:

    -- Toggle redshift (night mode)
    globalkeys = gears.table.join(globalkeys,
            awful.key({ modkey }, "Pause",      function () redshift.toggle() end),
            awful.key({ modkey }, "d",          function () redshift.dim() end),
            awful.key({ modkey, "Shift" }, "d", function () redshift.undim() end)
    )
    root.keys(globalkeys)

The Pause key is used by the author to activate my the screensaver, so Win+Pause is used here to toggle night mode with redshift.