Finally, a new release of Redshift, and at the same time packages have been built for the newly released Ubuntu Maverick (to be found in the PPA as usual). There is a bunch of bug fixes in this release and some hastily thrown-together configuration file support. It works, but there is no documentation other than the example at the end of this post. Here is the list of changes:
  • Support for optional configuration file (fixes #590722).
  • Add man page for redshift written by Andrew Starr-Bochicchio (fixes #582196).
  • Explain in help output that 6500K is the neutral color temperature (fixes #627113).
  • Fix: Handle multiple instances of the GNOME clock applet; contributed by Francesco Marella (fixes #610860).
  • Fix: Redshift crashes when VidMode fails (fixes #657451).
  • Fix: Toggle menu item should not be of class gtk.ImageMenuItem (fixes #620355).
  • New translations and translation updates: Lithuanian (Aurimas Fišeras); Brazilian Portuguese (Matteus Sthefano Leite da Silva); Finnish (Jani Välimaa); Italian (Simone Sandri); French (Emilien Klein); Russian (Anton Chernyshov).

Looking forward to 1.6.1

I hope to release Redshift 1.6.1 before the end of the month. It will include some small bug fixes, updated documentation and updated translations, but for this to happen I will need your help:

  • Please help get the translations finished for 1.6.1 if you are fluent in one of the languages that Redshift has been translated to. The text strings will not change before 1.6.1.
  • Are you familiar with writing man pages? Please help document the configuration file syntax (#662632).

Configuration file

Redshift will look for a configuration file in "~/.config/redshift.conf" (or in XDG_CONFIG_HOME if that has been set). A different configuration file can be loaded with the command line option "-c". Here is an example:

; Global settings
[redshift]
temp-day=5700
temp-night=3500
transition=1
gamma=0.8:0.7:0.8
location-provider=manual
adjustment-method=vidmode

; The location provider and adjustment method settings
; are in their own sections.
[manual]
lat=55.0
lon=12.0

; 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