Improvements

• Add disableExternalSensorWhenNoExternalMonitor hidden setting
• Disable the new Disconnect API when DisplayLink is running

Fixes

• Fix the Force Sleep when lid is closed functionality

Fixes

• Fix volume OSD not appearing in Sub-zero Dimming
• Fix Sub-zero Dimming not working with the dark overlay in some cases
• Fix Lunar not responding for some users

Features

• MediaMate integration:
  • lunar listen CLI command for getting realtime brightness/contrast/volume changes
  • hideOSD setting forces Lunar to not show any OSD whatsoever

Fixes

• Fix Overlay Dimming not working anymore

PWM flicker minimization

By combining hardware and software dimming at specific thresholds, Lunar can help people sensitive to PWM flickering.

The below video shows how you can use the Halide iOS app to find the lowest brightness where flickering starts to appear.

How to use it

For 2021 Apple Silicon MacBooks, adjust the Min Brightness to 38 in Display Settings to get advantage of this.

Lunar will then use Sub-zero Dimming below that value, which keeps the LED voltage steady while blocking light using the LCD.

For external monitors and other screens, play with the Min Brightness setting until you find the threshold under which PWM flicker becomes noticeable.

Then set the minimum brightness to the lowest value that doesn't cause flicker.

Improvements

• Added sidecar option to lunar toggle-connection CLI command

Fixes

• Fix Sub-zero Dimming being overridden by the system adaptive brightness
• Fix contrast jumping from max to min when going to/from Sub-zero Dimming
• Fix flashes and sudden transitions when going in and out of Sub-zero Dimming

Clock Mode improvements

• Added Sub-zero dimming range (can be disabled from the Controls menu)

Algorithm Variations

Fully Automated

This makes Clock Mode override any manual adjustments done by the user.

It also makes it re-apply the brightness of the previous schedule after standby/wake or after a screen reconnection.

User Controlled

This makes Clock Mode respect manual adjustments done by the user.

Brightness will always transition to the next schedule starting from the user adjusted brightness.

Also if the system wakes within 30 minutes of a passed schedule, the brightness of that previous schedule is re-applied

Features

• Add Send volume to all monitors setting
  • Helpful for setups with multiple similar monitors, where the audio device can't be matched to the correct monitor

Improvements

• Remove Menu button and allow Control+Click on the menubar icon to see the menu
  • Right Click or Two Finger Trackpad Click also works
• Renamed Options button to Settings
• Renamed Preferences button to Display Settings
• Fix an annoying macOS bug that keeps resetting the brightness of Apple displays to 50% after wake
• Remove the jitterAfterWake setting since it's no longer needed
• When disconnecting a screen, re-apply previous scaling on remaining screens one by one instead of all at once

Features

• Watchdog: restart Lunar when it hangs
• Trigger Sleep when the lid is closed feature
  • for those people that want the Mac to sleep when closing the lid while connected to a monitor and charging

• Sleep the Mac Apple Shortcut

Improvements

• Allow for steeper curves in Sync/Sensor/Location modes

Fixes

• Sync Mode should not flicker anymore

Features

• Watchdog: restart Lunar when it crashes
  • some crashes happen because of causes outside Lunar's control
  • this will ensure Lunar keeps running until the user quits it explicitly
  • when crashing too often, the Watchdog will be disabled automatically
• Fix Monitor Arrangement Shortcut to aid in repairing horizontal arrangements that get swapped around by the system

Improvements

• Better performance and lower CPU usage when the menu is not visible
• Show "Possibly disconnected" displays:
  • these are displays that have Auto Disconnect enabled but can't be detected as having the cable connected or not
  • they are always shown until connected to make sure there's always a way to disable Auto Disconnect

Features

• Show useful info about the adaptive mode in the menu header

Improvements

• Improved Reconnect and Toggle Connection Shortcuts by returning the UUID of the connected screen
  • This can be observed in use on the new Lunar Shortcuts webpage

Fixes

• Fixed some crashes and hangs

Sync Mode: new algorithm

Nits syncing

(Apple Silicon only)

Lunar can now read the real brightness value in nits from Apple displays and sync it more accurately to other monitors.

Most external monitors don't provide a way to read their min and max nits limits, so they start with a default range of 30-350 nits. Those limits can be adjusted from the Lunar interface:

Sync without a source

Sync Mode can now be used on all setups, even on those where there's no Apple display to sync from.

An All Displays slider will show up which will control the brightness and contrast of all screens in sync. Brightness keys will also control this special slider by default.

Any manual adjustment done to other monitors will be learnt and used by the All Displays slider.

Optimizations

The adaptive algorithm is now faster and more efficient, with an almost instantly responsive auto-learning curve. This is thanks to using better researched math formulas and new data structures tailored to brightness syncing.

The native brightness OSD will now show up on all monitors instead of only on the source display.

Polling is not used anymore, relying completely on a brightness change event based system, for less battery and CPU usage.

Sensor Mode: more sensors

Integrated sensors

(Apple Silicon only)

Lunar can now read ambient light lux values from sensors of Apple displays like:

• Studio Display
• Pro Display XDR
• LG UltraFine for Mac
• Thunderbolt Display
• LED Cinema

Wireless sensors

DIY ambient light sensors will now connect faster to Lunar, and keep a more stable connection between standby/wake states.

The sensor can also be configured more flexibly using the defaults command on the Mac where Lunar is running. This is especially helpful for when the lunarsensor server.

There are three settings that affect where Lunar looks for the sensor:

• sensorHostname set by default to lunarsensor.local
• sensorPort set by default to 80
• sensorPathPrefix set by default to /

For example, if you would like to have Lunar listen for sensor events at homeassistant.local:8123/lunar/events you would run the following commands:

defaults write fyi.lunar.Lunar sensorHostname homeassistant.local
defaults write fyi.lunar.Lunar sensorPort 8123
defaults write fyi.lunar.Lunar sensorPathPrefix /lunar

Lux-to-nits curve

Sensor Mode now starts with a better researched and tested curve that converts the ambient light to real nits for each display.

On Apple Silicon, the estimated nits limits from Sync Mode will also be taken into account to compute an accurate brightness value for each display.

BlackOut

On Apple Silicon devices running macOS Ventura, BlackOut now uses a new API that can disconnect the screen completely.

The power button will show the action that it will do based on the modifier keys that are pressed:

Auto Disconnect

When a screen is disconnected, it will appear at the bottom of the Lunar menu, with an option to enable the Auto Disconnect feature.

This will ensure the display stays disconnected between standby/wake and lid open/close cycles.

For the MacBook built-in screen, this also enables the previous Auto BlackOut feature which disconnects the MacBook screen when a monitor is connected, and turns it back on when all monitors are disconnected.

Sidecar

If you ever wanted to use a keyboard shortcut for connecting a Sidecar device, Lunar now supports that.

There's a new action in Apple Shortcuts that can connect a specific Sidecar iPad, and the Connection actions have been updated to support the most recently used Sidecar:

BlackOut can also natively disconnect/reconnect Sidecar devices on Apple Silicon.

DDC

Support for brightness/volume control using DDC has been stabilised for the integrated HDMI port of the M1 and M2 chips.

The previous logic was also improved to avoid possible flickering and speed up DDC port matching.

Other improvements

Settings

Some settings have been regrouped, and some are now hidden if they aren't relevant to the hardware in use.

It's also possible now to use the Reset button from the Options menu to: - Reset All Settings by Option-clicking - Reset display-specific Settings by Command-clicking

Logging

Lunar is now using the native unified logging architecture on macOS.

Logs can now be viewed in Console.app or in the terminal with the following command:

log stream --level debug --source --style compact --predicate 'subsystem == "fyi.lunar.Lunar" AND category == "default"'

There is no log file on disk anymore, logs can be collected on demand when they're needed to avoid excessive disk writes.

Features

Support for M2 Pro/Max

Both Thunderbolt/DP and HDMI connections on M2 Pro/Max should support DDC in this version.

Disconnect screens

You'll notice two new actions in macOS Shortcuts: Disconnect screen and Reconnect screen.

This new method can really disconnect and power off the screen just like closing the MacBook lid or disconnecting a cable would do, freeing up the GPU resources.

You retain the ability to use the MacBook keyboard/trackpad/webcam as usual, and disconnected external monitors usually keep the ability to charge the laptop.

These are the effort of reverse engineering the MacBook's clamshell mode which you can read about in this article

I'm planning to integrate them into BlackOut eventually but there's a lot more testing I have to do first.

Improvements

• Make the arrangements/layouts in Shortcuts work when the main display is not the built-in display
• Add "Set screen as main" Shortcut
• Add a way to disable sensor checking on the network
  • 

Improvements

• Add adaptiveSubzero display property that allows disabling using Sub-zero Dimming range automatically in adaptive algorithms
• Add UI checkbox for the adaptiveSubzero setting

Fixes

• Volume slider was not showing for network controlled monitors
• Lock the panel manager when using resolution/preset Shortcuts

Fixes

• Fix wireless sensor detection
• Fix manual adjustments not being reset
• Fix Sync Mode polling interval 0 not working on Apple external displays
• Fix Apple displays brightness value not getting updated inside Lunar
• Fix Network Control not working
• Fix "Find Screen" Shortcut comparators
• Fix "Set Resolution" Shortcut
• Fix dragging Sub-zero Brightness slider not triggering the auto learning algorithm in adaptive modes

Improvements

• Use new "Launch at Login" API on macOS Ventura and later

Fixes

• Skip nil EDID UUID in DCP service (fixes "Non-responsive DDC" on some setups)
• Disable logging to file in non-verbose mode
  • This should avoid some crashes and decrease load on disk
• Fix crash caused by using CFRunLoop unnecessarily
• Fix BlackOut not disabling mirroring when turning back on the display
• Fix DDC services not being assigned correctly to slower monitors
• Fix crash in network control code

Hotfix

• Fix non-responsive DDC for some specific monitor models

Features

Adaptive Sub-zero Dimming

Full support for using Sub-zero dimming automatically inside adaptive modes like Sync/Sensor/Location.

The Auto-learning algorithm can now learn Sub-zero brightness values and apply them in the future based on the current ambient light or sun position.

Native OSD

for Sub-zero dimming, XDR Brightness and Contrast adjustments

macOS Shortcuts

• Control brightness, volume etc. of a screen
• Change Lunar adaptive modes and apply global presets
• Plus actions that can be done exclusively in Shortcuts:
  • Swap monitors
  • Mirror any combination of screens
  • Arrange screens in various layouts
  • Change resolution and frame rate with a hotkey
  • Change presets with a hotkey (easily access reference presets like Design & Print or Photography)

New DDC algorithm

• Adds compatibility for the built-in HDMI port of the newer Apple Silicon Mac devices
  • Remember to enable DDC from the Controls menu of the HDMI display if it was previously disabled
• Improves writing speed with an algorithm that adapts to each monitor's I²C max speed
• Improves DDC Read reliability

Improvements

• Allow changing the ambient light sensor hostname from the command line
  • defaults write fyi.lunar.Lunar sensorHostname mysensor.local
• Make BlackOut without mirroring a bit faster
• Better detection for MCDP29XX chips
• Better detection for projectors and virtual displays
• Deactivate license on oldest device automatically when activation fails

Fixes

• Fix custom hotkeys not allowing hold to change continuously
• Fix possible crash when MPDisplayMgr can't lock access to displays

Full list of macOS Shortcuts

Fixes

• Fix some memory leaks in the DDC AVService matching logic
• Fix volume not respecting the DDC configured range in some cases

Improvements

• Resume Adaptive Paused after toggling from Manual to any other adaptive mode
• Print lux from external light sensor if available when using the lunar lux CLI command
• Add exception for VX2453 being detected as projector
• Add Auto Restart workaround for when DDC fails on rare setups
  • The option is enabled by default and can be configured from Advanced settings
  • 
• Disable logic for fuzzy matching audio output devices when volume hotkeys are disabled
• Install CLI in the home dir to avoid permission errors
• When brightness transition is set to Slow, use faster Smooth transitions for manual brightness key adjustments

Features

• Replace buggy fuzzy-matching logic with the Smith-Waterman algorithm written in Rust from Skim v2
  • This should fix some crashes and make some monitor matching logic faster
• Add ALS support for SparkFun Thing Plus

Fixes

• Improve text visibility in dark mode

Fixes

• Fix Options menu overflowing the screen
• Fix Options menu forcing light mode UI

Hotfix

• Fix Options menu not allowing slider dragging
• Decrease decay time when adjusting the Sync Mode curve to increase responsiveness

Hotfix

• Fix Options menu not being readable in Dark Mode

Features

• Allow keeping the Options menu open

Improvements

• Move to a floating window approach for the menu bar to avoid blocking clicks under it

Fixes

• Fix a crash caused by a recursive UI error

Features

• Beep feedback when pressing volume keys (follows system setting)
  • Hold Shift while pressing volume keys to invert behaviour

Improvements

• Detect when user doesn't want XDR to be auto disabled in low battery situations
• Allow XDR/Subzero/BlackOut OSD to overlap the Dock
  • This avoids overlapping the native brightness OSD
• Delay XDR and Sub-zero until next key press if brightness is already at max/min
• Disable Location Mode if permissions have been denied

Fixes

• Option+Shift now uses 1% step for Subzero and XDR
• Update sensor firmware installer
  • Add support for MagTag and Funhouse boards
• Stop checking for coordinates if location permissions have been denied

Features

• Support for the M2 CPU family and the new T811xIO controller

Fixes

• Allow streaming HTTP body in CLI implementation

Hotfix

• Fix XDR Brightness detection for older MacBooks

Hotfix

• Copy ESPHome configuration outside the app folder to avoid altering the bundle
  • This fixes cases where the app was deactivated and deleted after installing the firmware on the ambient light sensor

Features

• Add lunar facelight CLI command
• Add a mute/unmute button when hovering the volume slider
• Add option to toggle Dark Mode when using XDR Brightness for lowering power usage and LED heat
• The Night Shift disabling feature in XDR can now re-enable Night Shift if within the user schedule
• Add ALS support for Feather ESP32-S2 boards
• Add configurable mute workarounds for monitors where mute doesn't work because of non-standard DDC implementations

Improvements

• Minimise INFO logging
• Add log file rotation
• Add a way to stop sending the mute command and rely only on the volume value when muting audio
• Don't take volume DDC range into account when sending the mute workaround value
• React to screen sleep events faster to work around some buggy monitors that don't enter standby

Fixes

• Don't show the Notch Disabled button on non-MacBook screens

Hotfix

• Fix deadlock caused by the new delayDDCAfterWake setting
• Use HUD window level for the rounded corners mask window
• Forcefully disable the Refresh values from monitor settings option because it makes Lunar hang for too many users
  • This setting is only helpful when brightness is changed outside of Lunar and is not needed in 99% of the cases
  • Most of the monitors don't support DDC reading and Lunar can hang and lag because of waiting too long for a response from the monitor
  • People that actually need the setting can re-enable it from the Advanced settings tab inside the Options menu
• Implement screen round corners using 4 corner mask windows instead of one large hidden window
  • This is done to work around a macOS bug preventing clicks on dialog buttons even though the window is set to allow clicks through it

Features

• AutoXDR OSD: Show an OSD when enabling XDR automatically based on ambient light
  • Allows aborting the automatic XDR enabling by pressing the Esc key
  • Can be disabled from the HDR tab of the Options menu

• Add "Main display" and "Non-main displays" choices for brightness keys

• Add Disable usage of Gamma API completely setting for people that have trouble with macOS bugs related to the Gamma API
• Add an Unlock button to quickly unlock brightness or contrast sliders

• Add Delay DDC requests after wake setting for people that have trouble with monitor firmware bugs related to losing signal on simple DDC commands

Improvements

• Make sure brightness doesn't remain locked in non-DDC controls
• Show when brightness or contrast is locked
• Make it clear that DDC reading is experimental and should not be used unless really needed

• Separate the HDR and XDR settings into a new tab

• Detect manual changes in XDR state and honor them in the Auto XDR logic

Fixes

• UI fixes in preparation for macOS Ventura
• Known issues:
  • Scrolling over the slider feels clunkier and less fluid in macOS 13, hoping this is an OS bug that will get addressed in next beta
  • Some animations feel slower

Features

• Auto XDR based on ambient light
  • XDR will automatically enable when the ambient light is really bright
  • It will also disable when the ambient light is low enough for visibility in normal brightness
  • The feature will only work on the MacBook Pro 2021 when it is used alone (without external monitors)

• Add option to use non-Apple monitors as sources for Sync Mode

Improvements

• Automatically set Curve Slope to middle point on target monitors identical to the source
• Print single property on multiple displays when using the displays CLI command
• Add Hide Menubar Icon setting on the Configuration page

Fixes

• Fix CLI hanging
• Run some UI logging async to avoid blocking the main thread

Improvements

• Allow switching to the old BlackOut mirroring system for setups incompatible with the new API

Fixes

• Update Paddle to fix a crash happening when there was no network connection
• Allow setting min brightness to 0 for external monitors
• Fix CLI hanging
• Stop disabling logging when using the CLI
• Fix min brightness set to 1 instead of 0 on BlackOut

Hotfix

• Fix crash caused by EDID UUID fetching on invalid displays

Improvements

• Smoother XDR Brightness, Sub-zero Dimming and Software Dimming
• Update Paddle SDK to v4.3.0
• Don't show licensing UI more than once to avoid locking the UI
• Remove redundant Advanced Settings screen
• Restrict HDR compatibility workaround only for setups with EDR-capable displays
• Add a way to enforce DDC if the detection logic gives a false negative

• Better sensible defaults for contrast in Apple displays
• Add option to keep Night Shift on when using XDR by default

• Show XDR slider even on 100%
• Hide XDR/Subzero text if XDR has just been disabled
• Minimise chances of triggering the screen blanking bug by adding an artificial delay between Gamma API calls
• Add detection for the screen blanking issue

• Disable all Gamma reset calls when disabling the HDR compatibility workaround
• Disable Software Dimming automatically if DDC/AppleNative works
• Ensure CLI doesn't get stuck on a blocked socket
• Show Screen Blanking dialog even if the zero gamma workaround worked
• More reliable light sensor checker

Fixes

• Stop handling brightness keys and forward them to the system when the adjustment limit is reached
• Restore Gamma slider values properly
• Fix resetting the remaining adjustments limit

Hotfix

• Fix crash caused by slider hover handler
• Fix more crashes caused by refresh/resolution string
• Smoother XDR contrast

Licensing model

Some clarifications are needed after the last change:

• I don't have any plans on releasing a major version this year
• If for some reason I have to do that, everyone who paid for the 1-year of free updates before the change will receive the update for free if it's within their update period

Features

XDR Contrast Enhancer slider

Improve readability in direct sunlight when using XDR Brightness.

The contrast slider allows adjusting the pixel value formula for the brightest/darkest areas, to get even more contrast out of the miniLED display.

New XDR Brightness algorithm

Developed in collaboration with the creator of BetterDummy, using a more native approach to provide:

• Stable experience when toggling XDR
• Compatibility with higher brightness non-Apple HDR monitors
• Dynamic EDR pixel values to maximise the nits allowance based on the current brightness

Improvements

• Show that XDR needs Pro license instead of doing nothing
• Choose alpha upgrades over beta ones when the alpha channel is used
• Move DDC reads outside the main thread
• Improve brightness reponsiveness check
• Collect average DDC read/write time for features that depend on DDC timing (e.g. smooth transitions, refreshing values from monitor memory etc.)
• Better support for scroll up/down to adjust sliders
• Multi-user Fast Switching support
  • Retry display list reconciliation when the system provides invalid IDs
  • Disable Sync Mode if polling seconds is 0 and brightness observer fails to start
  • Observe log in/out events and stop calling screen wake listener if logged out
  • Pause HDR workaround while logged out
  • Pause Lunar if the user switches to another user
• Make brightness text clickable in the menu bar
• Ensure sub-zero dimming works if Allow zero brightness is off
• Use less restrictive EDID patterns for finding DDC ports
• Improve DDC compatibility on monitors with missing metadata
• Increase slider reponsiveness

Fixes

• Fix overall keyboard latency
• Pause some functions when switching users or going to standby
  • Light sensor detection
  • CLI server
  • Color and Gamma reader
  • Brightness observer
• Fix app info not hiding on first launch
• Fix crash on fetching the refresh rate string for the resolution dropdown

Hotfix

• Fix crash caused by brightness/volume key listener
• Fix XDR nits-to-gamma coefficient

Licensing model

I'm removing the 1-year of updates restriction and will give everyone unlimited free updates for Lunar 5.

Lunar will move to a major-version upgrade licensing model, where you will only have to pay for a new license if a new major version is launched (e.g. Lunar 6).

If that ever happens, you will also be able to use your previous license as a coupon to get a substantial discount if you previously bought Lunar.

Features

XDR Brightness

• Enhance contrast to make the dark-background/bright-text case more usable in the sun
• Make XDR more seamless: simply increasing the brightness over 100% with your keyboard should now enable XDR smoothly and without many flickers
• Keep XDR enabled when the screen comes back from standby
• HDR content overblowing is now fixed as long as Gamma is not used
  • Note: this is still a macOS bug that is awaiting a fix from Apple, all I've done is work around it
• Disable XDR on non-Apple monitors until the forced-monochrome bugs are fixed

BlackOut subsystem rewrite

• Now using the same private framework used by System Preferences
• More stable mirroring
• Tight integration with the newest version of BetterDummy

Auto BlackOut OSD

• Allow the system to settle screen configuration
• Allows the user to press esc to cancel Auto BlackOut

App Info section

• License status
• Version and Check for updates button
• Auto update settings
• Menu density selector

Advanced settings tab

Menu Density

Improvements

• Save last resolution before mirroring and re-apply it after mirroring ends
  • This works around a system bug where a non-native resolution is applied when mirroring is disabled
• Lower CPU usage further by reducing UI structure update when menus are not visible
• QuickActions menu becomes scrollable when it reaches the bottom of the screen
• Assign remaining DDC ports sequentially for monitors that can't be matched by EDID

Fixes

• Lower CPU usage by fixing a recursive call on the resolutions dropdown
• Lower memory usage and the number of threads spawned

Features

• Seamless XDR Brightness: enable XDR by simply increasing the brightness further after reaching 100%
• Allow disabling automatic Sub-zero Dimming and XDR Brightness from the Options menu

Improvements

• Make sure Auto Blackout works after screen wake by waiting for the system to settle the screen reconfiguration
• Restore XDR Brightness after screen wake
• Allow volume/mute hotkeys to work on the cursor display
• Move QuickActions options into a popover to lower height of the menu

Fixes

• Fix hiding the mute OSD

Improvements

• Don't apply app presets while XDR is enabled
• Lower CPU usage when checking for screenshot action on monitors that use Overlay

Features

• Disable Notch
  • Use hidden screen resolutions of the MacBook Pro to remove the notch completely

• Add option to disable "Control all monitors" for Function Hotkeys

Improvements

• The BlackOut Kill Switch doesn't trigger anymore on keys that contain more than just Command
• Increase precision of the self-learning algorithm
• Use astronomical sunrise/sunset as reference points in Location Mode
• Allow negative sun elevation in Location Mode

Fixes

• Fix crash when adjusting volume
• Fix crash when adjusting rotation
• Prompting about fallback to Software Dimming now makes sure the control is enabled
• Fix CLI printing displays
• Fix external display filter for CLI
• Fix brightness locking when interacting with brightness keys
• Fix flicker using the Brightness Slider because of Smooth Transition not being disabled while sliding

Features

• Custom Presets: save the current brightness/contrast as a preset that you can apply later

• Allow hiding most stuff in the QuickActions menu to get a smaller menu without unneeded functions

• Apply custom presets from the CLI:
  • lunar preset "Night Owl"
• Allow changing Min/Max Brightness on built-in and other non-DDC displays

Improvements

• The QuickActions menu now grows to the bottom instead of from the center to create a smoother feel
• Make sliders smoother by offloading adaptive mode work from the main thread when changing brightness fast
• Allow hiding Standard Presets from the Options menu
• Group resolutions by refresh rate
• Add images to differentiate resolutions easier
• Change some text fields to the system monospaced font because I like it
• Lower CPU usage overall by throttling events that happen too fast

Fixes

• Fix QuickActions menu appearing outside the screen edge
• Fix QuickActions menu redrawing at the center/bottom of the screen when changing specific settings

Features

• XDR Brightness: go past the 500 nits limit of the new 2021 MacBook Pro and Pro Display XDR
  • Warning: this is experimental. The system may become unresponsive for a few seconds when toggling this option
  • Animation glitches are expected when this is enabled

• Sub-zero dimming: dim brightness below 0%

• QuickActions redesign:

• Input Hotkeys redesign:

• Add BlackOut without mirroring checkbox in the Controls menu of each display
• Add BlackOut other displays action on holding Option+Shift
• Add Allow brightness to reach zero checkbox in the Controls menu for built-in displays
  • By default this is disabled to avoid turning off the display by mistake
• Implement BlackOut for AirPlay/Sidecar/DisplayLink (it's just a pitch black overlay really, but that's the most I can do)

Improvements

• Add Emergency Kill Switch for BlackOut
  • Press the ⌘ Command key more than 8 times in a row to force disable BlackOut
• F.lux detection improvements
  • Ensure Overlay gets activated
  • Add note about Shifty as an alternative
  • Update AppleScript for Monterey
• Allow Preferences window to be moved by its background
• Add selector for switching between System and Lunar adaptive brightness
• Disable overlay temporarily when taking a screenshot

Fixes

• Fix Gamma flashing bright from time to time
• Remove Software Dimming delay if it's the only control enabled
• Fix displays having low/high brightness after wake/reconnection
• Fix overflow crash in Clock Mode
• Fix BlackOut being stuck when using it without mirroring
• Fix contrast getting stuck to 0 when Lunar is restarted while BlackOut is on
• Check for vendor ID on BetterDummy screens

Note: Starting from v5.5.0 Lunar will require macOS 11.0+

Fixes

• Fix deadlock on screen wake/reconnection

Features

• Efficient Sync Mode
  • A new internal system API is used to react to built-in display brightness changes instead of polling continuously for them
  • This lowers the CPU usage to 0.1% on average when no brightness change occurs
  • This new method can be disabled by setting the Sync Polling Interval to a value greater than 0 seconds
  • If brightness syncing stops working after the update, try setting the Polling Interval to 2 seconds

• Add lunar blackout command to CLI
• Add lunar gamma --restore-color-sync command for resetting to system default color settings

Improvements

• Update ddcutil-server for Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit
• Improve Lunar CLI help

Fixes

• Fix software dimming not going back to 100% after app restart on more recent macOS versions
• Fix BlackOut dialog appearing wrongly

Fixes

• Fix sudden brightness changes because of brightness being read incorrectly on some monitors
• Delay when retrying sensor requests
• Fix radius value disappearing on editing

Features

Client-server architecture for the Lunar CLI

The lunar command can now control the running Lunar app directly instead of spawning a new instance.

If the Lunar app is not running, the CLI will automatically use the old method of running the command directly.

New arguments:

• --remote forces the lunar command to never spawn a new instance and fail if there's no Lunar app already running
• --host configures the hostname where to send the command
  • This means you can now also control Lunar apps running on other Macs
• --key configures the API key for authenticating the lunar command against the Lunar app server
  • This is only needed when controlling Lunar instances running on other systems
• --new-instance forces the lunar command to always run the command locally and spawn a new instance even if there's a Lunar app already running

BlackOut improvements

Added BlackOut without mirroring on holding Shift.

• Added logic to automatically disable BlackOut when monitors are disconnected and the only remaining display is blacked out
• Configured mirroring as .appOnly so that the system doesn't remember the BlackOut mirroring state after Lunar is quit

Improvements

• Make the resolutions dropdown more useful with some formatting and pretty colors
  • 
• Add a way to easily toggle between Software Dimming and Hardware DDC
  • 
• Add a way to install Lunar CLI from the command-line
  • /Applications/Lunar.app/Contents/MacOS/Lunar install-cli
• Allow 2-byte values for DDC commands because some monitors support wider ranges (e.g. ASUS PG32U)

Fixes

• Fix BlackOut getting stuck in some rare cases
• Release leaking memory on Intel DDC implementation with AMD GPU

Improvements

• Move the Volume keys control all monitors setting to make its effect clearer

Fixes

• Fix crash caused by reading built-in brightness on a different thread
• Add 1 second delay between switching input and applying defined brightness on Input Hotkeys

Improvements

• Move the Auto Blackout setting to the main preferences screen

Fixes

• Fix crash caused by SimplyCoreAudio deadlock

Improvements

• Add a way to extend the range of Color Gain for professional displays like the Wacom Cintiq Pro
• Add a way to disable re-apply on wake for Color Gain
• Security updates to dependencies

Fixes

• Fix colors being washed out because the Color Gain value of the monitor didn't match what Lunar had stored

Improvements

• Show slider values on the knob
• Improve slider contrast
• Add glass material to QuickActions
• Detect HDMI port properly on the M1 Pro and M1 Max
  • This will disable DDC automatically for that port as there's still no way to send DDC commands through it

Fixes

• Hide second background of QuickActions when Reduce Transparency is active
• Make sure to re-enable adaptive brightness on built-in after switching from Manual to other modes while in an App Preset

Fixes

• Make sure that monitors with Network Control disabled don't get matched with a Pi controller
• Remove the Lunar Test flashing text properly after onboarding

Improvements

• Add an IOService event detector to re-create the I2C service port cache when the IOKit tree changes
  • This should help with cases when the monitor is not responding to Lunar's brightness/volume/input changes until app restart

Fixes

• Fix fetching script dir in Lunar sensor install script
• Remove HDMI port detection logic for M1 Pro/Max because it causes false positives
  • Will resume work on this when my MacBook arrives

Note: if you have a monitor connected to the HDMI port of the MacBook, disable DDC manually

Improvements

• Make brightness key forwarding optional in Advanced settings
  • If the built-in display brightness is not persisting properly, try enabling this setting

Fixes

• Reset BlackOut state if brightness is greater than 1
• Don't show OSD for built-in brightness when forwarding media keys to the system
• Fix crash because of wrong datapoints for the Location Mode chart
• Fix Input Hotkey dropdown in Dark Mode

Features

• Auto BlackOut
  • Turn off the built-in display automatically when an external monitor is connected
  • Turn back on the built-in display when all external monitors are disconnected
• Simpler visual design for Quick Actions

Improvements

• Automatically switch to Gamma on the HDMI port of the M1 Pro/Max MacBook
• Don't re-apply brightness if App Presets is empty (avoids jittery brightness on some displays)
• Make sure we don't accidentally disable "Automatically adjust brightness"

Fixes

• Fix option key being wrongly taken into account when pressing brightness keys
• Update Sparkle auto-updating framework to fix some GUI bugs
• Update diagnostics text to include the MacBook HDMI limitation
• Fix checkSlowWrite for DDC which could wrongly mark smooth transitions as unsupported
• Make sure to remove the Lunar Test marker when closing diagnostics/onboarding

Features

• Add possibility to stream logs to the developer in real time for more efficient troubleshooting

Improvements

• Make Gamma/Overlay changes faster when using sliders
• Make the Adaptive Mode dropdown easier to click
• Add note about how to adjust contrast independently on the Hotkeys page
• Make App Presets more reliable on single monitor setups by not caring about the window visibility
• Make Ultrafine AmbientLightCompensation detection more strict
  • It seems there are some models that report that AmbientLightCompensation is enabled while HasAmbientLightCompensation is false

Fixes

• Fix contrast media keys
• Fix internal sensor detection
• Fix contrast locking by itself when showing/hiding advanced settings

Improvements

• Correctly set max DDC brightness to 255 on LED Cinema displays

Fixes

• Fix clamshell mode detection for some special setups
• Fix brightness OSD not showing in some cases (missed some stuff)
• Fix brightness keys not working in previous release

Features

• Add back the Adaptive Mode dropdown in the QuickActions menu
• Add more useful buttons at the bottom of the QuickActions menu:
  • Preferences
  • Restart
  • Quit

Improvements

• Add menu item to Relaunch the onboarding process
• Improve QuickActions menu height formula
• Add notice about how to relaunch onboarding if needed
• Improve brightness slider for built-in display

Fixes

• Fix Sync Source button text being unreadable
• Fix overlay artifacts appearing when disconnecting iPad Sidecar
• Fix brightness OSD not showing in some cases
• Fix Clock Mode schedules being reverted to the current brightness on some occasions
• Fix App Presets window detection by intersecting the window frame with the raw display bounds

Fixes

• Fix detection for Samsung U28E850

Fixes

• Fix issue where adjusting brightness with keys would double the change for external displays

Features

• Add Volume Slider show/hide toggle inside the DDC menu of external displays
• Add Copy from display for Curve Factors
• Add possibility to show slider values
• Separate brightness and contrast for app presets when Merge brightness and contrast is disabled
• Add Jitter After Wake function for monitors that wake up with dimmed brightness
  • Can be activated from the terminal using defaults write fyi.lunar.Lunar jitterAfterWake 1

Improvements

• Make contrast syncing snappier
• Make the CLI DDC values a bit smarter
  • If the value is in the form of 0x1F, x1F or 1Fh it is parsed as hex
  • Otherwise it is parsed as decimal
  • Passing --hex will always parse values as hex
• Work around the system issue where the built-in display brightness is reverting automatically after a manual change

It seems that some MacBooks don't support brightness change event notifications which causes the manual adjustments to not be reflected in the system brightnesss curve. In this update we try to detect if a MacBook is missing that support and instead of controlling its brightness, we forward the brightness key events to the system and let it do the brightness changing. Using the sliders for changing the built-in brightness will still have the reverting problem though, because we can't forward those events to the system.

Fixes

• Don't ask for permissions on every launch if the user doesn't need that functionality
• Don't force focus Lunar window if dark mode is toggled

Fixes

• Fix lag and wrong monitor assignment when DDC was used for two identical monitors
• Fix crash when getting current resolution for some displays
• Fix Sync Mode for Ultrafines that report having ambient light adaptive brightness enabled when in fact they don't

Improvements

• Add all MCCS VCP codes to lunar ddc
• Add Use current brightness button in Clock Mode
• Add Merge brightness and contrast checkbox on the Configuration page
  • Allows for reverting to the previous behaviour of controlling brightness and contrast separately

Fixes

• Fix crash in diagnostics/onboarding when closing the window
• Automatically restart app when memory usage goes above 1GB
• The Advanced button on the Configuration page was not clickable on the top part

Features

• Support for M1 Pro and M1 Max
• Onboarding process on first launch
• Redesigned Diagnostics

• Redesigned Quick Actions menu
  • The menu appears on click instead of hover over the menu bar icon now
  • The native menu can be shown using:
    • Right click (or two finger Trackpad click) on the menu bar icon
    • Click on the three dots icon in the top right of the Quick Actions menu

• Sliders everywhere
  • Merged brightness and contrast slider
  • Volume slider in the QuickActions menu
  • Only possible with the incredible help of @waydabber, maker of BetterDummy
• Redesigned Display Settings menus

• Restart Lunar menu item and hotkey

• Overlay/Gamma switcher button inside the Controls menu

• App presets now work for the built-in display as well

• Adding Option key to the BlackOut hotkey will turn off monitor completely through DDC
  • Example: let's say you have configured BlackOut to activate on Ctrl-Command-6
  • Then pressing Ctrl-Command-Option-6 will allow you to turn off the monitor completely (just like pressing its physical power button) if the monitor supports that function
• Rounded corners for any display

Improvements

• Enable the power button in the Lunar window to also work when the Allow BlackOut on single screen option is enabled
• Add high memory usage checker to aid in fixing memory errors in the future
• Use Apple Native smooth transitions using private macOS APIs on Apple vendored displays
• Smooth transitions can now happen in parallel if there are multiple displays with different controls
• Cut the memory usage in half by replacing large images in the UI with vector-drawn bezier paths
• Improved BlackOut logic when using a dummy display
• Filter checkbox for showing/hiding dummy displays
• Hotkeys changing the display with the cursor now affect all monitors in a mirror set
  • This improves support for apps like BetterDummy

Fixes

• Software overlay for Sidecar now appears correctly on first connection
• Notify the system when changing built-in brightness to allow the system curve to readapt

Features

• Useful Info menu item in menu bar that can also be hidden
• Allow BlackOut on single screen advanced setting for people that:
  • mostly use BlackOut from the keyboard
  • have the need to turn off the external monitor while the MacBook is in clamshell mode
• Option to show brightness and contrast of the active display beside the menu bar icon
• Option to hide the orientation switcher in the QuickActions menu
• Hide QuickActions when clicking anywhere outside of it

Improvements

• Change Apply Gamma checkbox to an enable/disable button that also disables value editing
• Close QuickActions menu faster when moving the cursor away from it
• Better possible clamshell mode detection to avoid setting external monitor brightness to 0 when closing the MacBook lid

Fixes

• Fix crashes that happened because of accessing AVService/I2C cache from multiple threads
• Make sure to update some text fields that were not updated on launch

Features

• Clock Mode: schedule brightness and contrast presets based on sunset/sunrise/noon or a specific time
• Dark Overlay dimming for displays that don't support Gamma or DDC (DisplayLink and Sidecar usually)
• Curve Learning now works with external brightness changes if Refresh values from monitor settings is enabled in Advanced settings
  • Contrast does nothing when the overlay is used
• Sensor Mode can now use the internal light sensor of the M1 MacBooks
• Add option to disable checking for DDC responsiveness in Advanced settings
• Display filters for deciding what to show in the Preferences window:
  • Virtual displays
  • AirPlay displays
  • Projectors
  • Disconnected monitors

Improvements

• Improve dynamic gain on the TSL2591 external light sensor by checking for overflows
  • You will need to reinstall the ambient light sensor firmware to get this improvement
• Improve Gamma smooth transitions by removing unnecessary animations and allowing it to appear on Mission Control
  • Thanks to @waydabber for finding out this edge case and for suggesting that the window needs to be set as stationary to fix it
• Recover Facelight state after screen sleep/wake
• Improve smooth and slow transitions for Apple vendored displays that can use Native Controls
• Reset audio device cache on wake and on display reconnection to avoid volume controls not working in some cases
• Do network requests asynchronously where possible to improve responsiveness and fix some memory leaks
• Simplify menu bar icon menu

Fixes

• Fix crash when the DDC faults storage was accessed from multiple threads
• Fix crash that happened on modifying the I2C controller cache when the IO registry tree changed

Fixes

• Fix crash because of gamma smooth transition logic
• Fix crash when Sensor Mode would update brightness on a non-main thread
• Avoid app entering a not responding state when in Location mode and waking the screen

Improvements

• Make sure Gamma never goes below 0.08 on brightness 0 to retain visibility
• Allow press-and-hold detection to be disabled for users that encounter problems with it
• Remove unused serial-port and volume-based sensor options

Features

• Revamped Hotkeys page for easier configuration of how the keys should work
• Hotkeys now support press and hold for repeating actions
• Add configurable FaceLight brightness/contrast settings inside the Lunar Display settings
• Add Disable all hotkeys button on the Hotkey page

• Add Slow brightness transition option
• Change Lunar window pages using keys:
  • Press H for the Hotkeys page
  • Press C for the Configuration page
  • Press A for the Advanced Settings page
  • Press B for the Built-in display page
  • Press 1..9 for switching to the Display page with that number
  • Press 0 for switching to the last display page

Improvements

• Re-apply BlackOut on screen wake to account for brightness being set to a non-zero value by the system
  • This needs Re-apply brightness on screen wake to be enabled inside Advanced settings
• Make the Gamma smooth transition dot even less visible to avoid creating the perception of a dust speck on the screen

Fixes

• Fix Lunar not responding in some cases when waking up from sleep
• Fix swipe being blocked on the Configuration page

Fixes

• Fix BlackOut hotkey not reflecting in the menu bar item
• Fix Check for Updates not working on some occasions

Features

• Add a way to hide the macOS volume OSD for monitors that have their own volume indicator

Features

• Add navigation bar and remove left/right arrow buttons
• Simplify and smoothen brightness graph
  • More complex data can be shown by enabling Show more graph data in Advanced settings

Fixes

• Fix internal display being dimmed accidentally after the lid was opened
• Fix QuickActions popover closing accidentally right after opening

Improvements

• Add Continue button for diagnostics instead of relying on pressing keyboard keys
• Improve Native Controls detection for the built-in display when closing/opening the lid

Fixes

• Fix DDC for monitors that act as TVs when in fact they aren't

Improvements

• Add contact form on lunar.fyi
• Allow fully offline installations

Fixes

• Make Gamma ColorSync profile matching work on Intel as well
  • Many thanks to @waydabber for suggesting that a Gamma table of 256 values might fix this
• Fix Hotkeys handling after adding the built-in display page
• Add missing hotkeys for changing screen orientation in Advanced settings
• Fix recursive locking crash because of using NSScreen inside MPDisplay

Fixes

• Fix stack overflow crash in detecting if a display is built-in
• Check for display ID to be online before reading Gamma
• Make ColorSync profile matching in Software Control mode M1 only
  • This is because Apple's CGGetDisplayTransferByTable is buggy on Intel and crashes the app on some systems

Features

• Dark Mode UI

• Add Built-in Display page

• BlackOut: a feature that lets you selectively turn off displays by:
  • Mirroring the main display contents
  • Setting their brightness and contrast to 0
  • How to use:
    • Press Ctrl+Cmd+6 to activate it and turn off the display where the cursor is
    • You can also activate it by clicking the power button on the display page for the following cases:
      • Built-in display
      • External monitors that don't support DDC

• Add "Use Alternate Brightness Keys" checkbox on the Hotkeys page
  • Useful if you have a keyboard that has F14/F15 keys and the Brightness keys can send special key codes
• Add "Include Built-in Display" checkbox on the Hotkeys page
  • Useful if you use a Hackintosh with an external monitor set as a built-in display
• Add Lock Curve button for disabling the auto-learning curve algorithm when needed
• Add Reset buttons in the gear icon menu
• Allow setting minimum values for DDC Limits
• Add more useful controls in the gear icon menu
  • DDC Color Gain
  • Resolutions (including hidden resolutions)
  • Screen orientation

• Replace the Adaptive button with a more useful input switch dropdown in the QuickActions menu

Improvements

• Respect custom color profiles when adjusting brightness using Gamma
• Handle non-english locales in text fields
• Show error when CLI can't be installed and show a possible fix using chown and chmod
• Allow fuzzy display name matching in CLI
  • Things like this should work now:
    • Switch input to HDMI for LG UltraFine: lunar displays ultrafine input hdmi
    • Read contrast of Dell U3419W: lunar displays dell34 contrast
• Switch to rounding the curve value in the auto-learning algorithm for more precise mappings
• Make transitions smoother on Apple displays

Fixes

• Fix crash on Monterey beta 5 because of Thread.private not existing anymore
• Handle cases where app exceptions can't be added because their bundle doesn't contain CFBundleName
• Pin TSL2591 library to a known working version
• Fix DDC limits not being applied correctly in Manual Mode
• Fix data race crash when iterating some dictionaries
• Allow brightness 0 in Sync Mode on iMacs

Improvements

• Add SPI as lib dependency for sensor firmware to avoid compilation errors in the future
• Improve Network Control monitor matching in multi-monitor cases
• Quit older instances if a user launches Lunar while it is already running
• Always show Network Control prompt on the main monitor
• Check if new value is different from old value when listening for settings changes to avoid duplicating events

Fixes

• Don't check for updates on launch to avoid annoying people who don't like updates as much as I do
• Fix typo which caused the monitor serial to be wrongly compared to the product ID when matching monitors
• Allow CLI to set properties that don't need an available control

Improvements

• Remove the need for a yellow dot in Gamma and Network control
• Add Show virtual displays checkbox in Advanced settings
  • Turns out DisplayLink monitors show up as virtual and you need this checked if you want Lunar to see the monitor
• Fix Gamma (Software Controls) curve calculation being skewed in the 0% to 10% range
  • The zero point (no gamma changes) is now when BRIGHTNESS=100 and CONTRAST=75
  • Lightness change between brightness values should be more consistent with the human eye response to light

Fixes

• Don't check for updates on launch if Check for updates automatically is disabled in Advanced settings
• Fix some unexpected crashes
• Fix license being disabled erroneously on network problems

Features

• Add support for ESP8266 sensor boards
• Implement auto-gain and adaptive integration time for light sensors

Improvements

• Make firmware installer window appear faster by looking for serial devices in the background
• Highlight Advanced settings button
• Add URL for opening the gear icon menu directly: lunar://display/settings

Fixes

• Fix support for Adafruit Metro ESP32 S2
• Fix some unexpected crashes
• Keep Lunar Pro active when license fails verification with Paddle for the first few times

Features

• lunar:// URLs for easy access to specific parts of the UI
  • Settings page: lunar://settings
  • Advanced Settings page: lunar://advanced
  • Hotkey page: lunar://hotkeys
  • Display page: lunar://displays
  • Specific display page: lunar://displays/:number (e.g. lunar://displays/3 for third display)

Fixes

• Fix Auto-learning for Location mode when the sun is below the horizon (negative degrees)
• Fix silent automatic updates

Improvements

• Make the main window interaction smoother by removing unnecessary chart rendering
• Make the paid updates message clearer when the free updates period expires

Fixes

• Fix Auto-learning Curve for Location and Sensor mode
• Move some UI operations on the main thread to keep the window visually consistent
• Check for possible clamshell mode while Sync Mode is adapting to avoid setting brightness to 0 before the IsLidClosed flag has been set

Features

• Tutorial completed for DIY Wireless Ambient Light Sensor: https://lunar.fyi/sensor
• Add option to apply volume 0 on pressing mute in Advanced settings
  • Some monitors don't accept the mute DDC control so this could be useful
• Curve factors separated by display and mode
  • The curve factors are now found in the gear icon menu and are stored on a per-monitor and per-mode basis
  • If you set some curve factors while Lunar is in Sync Mode and then change to Location Mode for example, there will be different curve factor values

Improvements

• Re-apply brightness and contrast when the display control changes

Fixes

• Correctly turn on/off the refresh values thread when checking/unchecking "Refresh values from monitor settings"
• Turn on Sync Mode correctly on Lunar launch

Features

• Support for DIY Wireless Ambient Light Sensor
  • Tutorial on how to create your own sensor is almost done
  • Please check this page periodically for updates: https://lunar.fyi/sensor

Improvements

• Update Paddle framework which fixes the creation of the file default.profraw on every run of the CLI
• Show current version under the Lunar logo in the main window

Fixes

• Fix crashes because of thread unsafe hotkeys cache
• Fix crash because of accessing a nil variable
• Fix brightness being set to max after sleep
• Fix hotkey not being unregistered when clearing it using the x button

Improvements

• Allow up to 3 input hotkeys per monitor
• Improve AVService detection to allow even more monitors to be controlled through DDC on M1 Macs
• Add configurable DDC Sleep Factor in Advanced Settings

Fixes

• Fix crashes because of thread unsafe settings cache
• Remove scrolling from Quick Actions popover to fix all the disappearing issues
• Fix name being set to "Unknown" in some cases
• Fix "License Verification failed after 5 days" appearing incorrectly
• Fix input hotkeys not working anymore after a while
• Fix input dropdown not being updated with latest selected input by hotkey

Improvements

• Disable Gamma by default in Hardware/Native/Network controls
• Add checkbox to enable Gamma in non-Software controls
• Improve Mac Mini HDMI port detection to allow USB-C-to-HDMI adapters to work with DDC on the USB-C port

Fixes

• Fix Boolean value handling in the CLI integration
• Fix Quick Actions popover contents disappearing on some occasions

Features

• DDC support for M1 Macs (beta)
  • Only possible because of the great advice and example code from Zhuowei Zhang and the amazing work of Davide Guerri and Tao J
  • Mac Mini HDMI still not working: Mac Mini Github issue
• Add a way to set default gamma values when using Hardware/Native/Network controls

Improvements

• Add "Hide yellow dot" checkbox in Advanced settings
• Reset DDC write/read faults when a successful read is detected to avoid the incorrect marking of monitors as Non-reponsive DDC

Fixes

• Fix license not being activated without an app restart
• Fix Location Mode not fetching correct sunrise/sunset/noon when close to midnight
• Don't reset ColorSync settings and hopefully respect calibration profiles in Gamma mode
• Fix brightness flickering caused by Gamma controls kicking in faster than DDC/CoreDisplay/Network by adding a 5 second delay to the Gamma setter after:
  • App launch
  • System startup
  • Login
  • Wake from standby
  • Display connection/reconnection

Features

• Allow negative offsets for app exceptions
• Add separate curve factors for brightness and contrast

Improvements

• Add a way to change the automatic check for updates interval in Advanced settings
• Isolate reset actions into a dropdown
• App exceptions logic rewrite
  • Now the offsets are only applied if the app has any visible window on an external monitor (in the past the offsets were applied on app launch/quit)
  • The offsets are also only applied to the monitor where the app is visible

Fixes

• Always reset adjustment limit within 24 hours
• Fix diagnostics message saying the monitor supports DDC when in fact it didn't support it

Fixes

• Shake window when trying to input an invalid field value
• Revert all changes to a field when pressing escape
• Pressing tab inside a field will commit the value
• Show Lunar window on the screen where the cursor is
• Hide yellow dot on operation end

Fixes

• Make sure brightness/contrast is not changed automatically when it is marked as locked
• Make gamma operation highlighter async to avoid blocking the UI on rare occasions

Fixes

• Fix flicker because of switching to/from fullscreen apps
• Fix app not responding on startup because of blocking the main thread too early in the startup process

Fixes

• Fix curve factor going to 0.00 on some systems

Improvements

• Improve DDC framebuffer detection logic by using the private CGSServiceForDisplayNumber API
• Add a way to enable verbose logging in Advanced settings
• Set DDC back to responsive if any read/write succeeds

Fixes

• Fix changing modes would not stop/start the Sync/Location/Sensor listeners

Improvements

• Show why Sync/Location/Sensor modes are disabled when Lunar Pro is not active
• Add Join the community menu item

Improvements

• Use DisplayServices to read builtin brightness and fix the HDR issue

Fixes

• Show correct builtin brightness in Lunar menu

Fixes

• Fix built-in display detection logic
• Fix media key handler

Fixes

• Fix crash because of launch at login empty list

Features

• Make it possible to set Pro Display XDR and LG UltraFine monitors as source for Sync Mode

Improvements

• Show tooltips with the reason why a specific Mode is disabled when hovering on it
• Allow controlling monitor with the cursor on it when Send Keys To All Monitors is unchecked
• Add useful reset buttons in the gear icon menu
  • Reset Network Control for when the network controls aren't activated automatically because the system mDNS browser is stuck
  • Reset DDC for when DDC is deemed unresponsive because the system has reported the monitor as active when it was in fact inactive

Fixes

• Fix crashes because of gamma locking
• More UI accesses moved to Main Thread
• Fix display name edit not saving
• Fix network controller reset on wake and display reconnect
• Fix QuickActions floating window disappearing too quickly

Improvements

• Add native support for old Apple Cinema and Cinema HD displays
• Add Show Dock Icon option under Advanced settings

Fixes

• Ensure window is shown when launching Lunar while menubar icon is hidden
• Fix crash on NetServiceBrowser reset
• Fix crash because of settings observer being deallocated too soon

Fixes

• Stop showing Your period of free updates has expired when the period of updates is still valid

Fixes

• It seems Lunar needs macOS 10.15 or higher (even though Xcode compiles it just fine for 10.13) so I made that the minimum requirement

Improvements

• Added Advanced setting for disabling brightness re-apply on screen wake
• Show Lunar window before showing Paddle licensing UI

Fixes

• Fix valid updates checking logic
• Show window when menu bar icon is hidden and app is launched while already running
• Fix data race when ddcutil service is found on the network
• Fix setting brightness for Apple vendored displays
• Delay reset for mDNS browser when coming out of standby to avoid a recent CoreFoundation bug: CFRunLoopSource type mismatch, found CFSocket
• Check for Catalina or higher before trying to get display info dictionary

Improvements

• Added Sync Mode test inside diagnostics

Fixes

• Show window when menu bar icon is hidden and app is launched while already running
• Fix data race when ddcutil service is found on the network
• Fix setting brightness for Apple vendored displays
• Delay reset for mDNS browser when coming out of standby to avoid a recent CoreFoundation bug: CFRunLoopSource type mismatch, found CFSocket
• Check for Catalina or higher before trying to get display info dictionary

Improvements

• Added Sync Mode test inside diagnostics

Lunar 4 is released!

Head over to the front page for more details.

Improvements

• Show built-in brightness in menu
• Update hotkey libraries
• Use Swift Package Manager for most of the frameworks
• Use LaunchAtLogin framework to fix start at login

Fixes

• Fix tooltip not closing when clicking on the display page

Improvements

• Detect scrolling direction so that scrolling up always increases value

Improvements

• Make display name editable

Fixes

• Fix monitor volume restore
• Fix crashes because of using deallocated self

Features

• Implement built-in brightness clipping limits for monitors with lower range of brightness/contrast
• Add a menu item to allow disabling volume key listener

Fixes

• Fix Location Permissions prompt not showing up on macOS Catalina

Improvements

• Add a bit more analytics data and route the requests through my own server
• Upload diagnostics to my own server instead of transfer.sh
• Reduce memory usage by manually deallocating unused views

Fixes

• Hide buttons and labels properly when no display is connected
• Fix a ton of memory leaks
• Fix volume keys not being able to be disabled

Improvements

• Show Lunar version in the menu
• Hide rarely used menu items under an Advanced submenu item

Fixes

• Fix Sync mode thread not running on some occasions

Improvements

• Disable Adaptive button in Manual mode

Fixes

• Fix crash when there are displays with same UUID
• Fix crash on MediaKeyTap deinit

Improvements

• Add a way to extend brightness range up to 255 for monitors that support this

Fixes

• Fix some memory corruption bugs by improving concurrency
• Properly hide/show the Non-responsive DDC message
• Fix diagnostics encryption key missing

Improvements

• Add reset on click action to the Non-responsive DDC message

Fixes

• Make active screen detection more reliable
• Only allow one thread at a time to use DDC to avoid race conditions
• Disable up/down value change hotkeys when Quick Actions disappear
• Embed all used Swift libraries to avoid crashes on some systems

Improvements

• Increase brightness/contrast/volume hotkey step to 6
• Allow fine-adjustment hotkeys:
  • Use Option + hotkey for hotkeys assigned from the Lunar hotkey page
  • Use Option + Shift + hotkey for media keys
• Open System Preferences for displays/sound when pressing Option + media key

Features

• Add support for changing monitor volume and mute state
• Show native OSD when changing monitor brightness, contrast and volume
• Implement listeners for media keys
  • Lunar will ask for accessibility permissions to enable this functionality
  • Instructions:
    • Press keyboard brightness keys while the cursor is on an external monitor to change the brightness on that monitor
    • Press Control + keyboard brightness keys to adjust contrast
    • Press keyboard volume/mute keys while the audio output is set to the monitor audio device to adjust volume/mute
    • In multi-monitor setups, Lunar can't detect which monitor audio device is selected so it will change the volume of the display that the cursor is on
• Many thanks to Hongfeng Xu (@Mic238) for helping me with extensive testing on these features!

Improvements

• Detect non-responsive monitors and show that in the Quick Actions popover
• Automatic detection of GPU for adaptive DDC reply delay
  • This should minimize kernel panics and system freezes when reading values from the monitor
• Add special brightness implementation for LED Cinema monitors

Fixes

• Fixed a typo that was preventing smooth transition to be disabled for contrast

Fixes

• Minimize non-null assertions
• Fix Day Length calculation in Location mode
• Fix "end scrolling" detection

Features

• Add option to remove disconnected displays from the Quick Actions popover
• Better detection of builtin displays

Fixes

• Fix a memory corruption bug

Improvements

• Improve detection of slow DDC implementations

Features

• Add special support for Apple Thunderbolt Display
• Add option to manually enable brightness monitoring (only for the brave)

Fixes

• Filter out built-in and testing displays from saved data

Improvements

• Make an attempt to detect slow DDC implementations and skip reading in those cases

Features

• Show both connected and disconnected displays in Quick Actions

Fixes

• Fix all kinds of crashes

Improvements

• Move display and app exceptions from Core Data to User Defaults to avoid concurrency bugs

Features

• Add option to disable Quick Actions popover

Fixes

• Fix lid closed detection on iMacs and Mac Minis

Improvements

• Add more crash data to allow me to better diagnose issues remotely
• Make transitions smooth by default on UltraFine displays
• Read brightness periodically by default on UltraFine displays

Fixes

• Fix system freeze caused by trying to read monitor brightness using DDC
• Fix Manual mode values not respecting limits

Improvements

• Show Quick Actions when changing brightness/contrast using hotkeys

Improvements

• Clamshell mode detection toggle in menu

Features

• Quick Actions popover when hovering over the menu item
• Add support for LG UltraFine displays
• Implement Clamshell Mode
• Keep Lunar in sync by reading the monitor's brightness and contrast periodically
• Remove all third party analytics and add a single request for counting unique users anonymously
  • This request sends a SHA256 hash of your device serial number to my server through a pubsub service
  • The serial number is impossible to deduce from the hash and the request is untraceable back to your device

Fixes

• Fix left and right hotkeys not being registered sometimes
• Patch Magnet to disable Input Monitoring request
• Fix preferences saving permission
• Fix dictionary access race condition in DDC code

Improvements

• Replace Fabric with Sentry for crash reporting because Fabric was acquired by Google
• Remove HotKey library and rely only on the Magnet framework
• Add sane defaults for brightness/contrast limits and offsets
• Improve speed and responsiveness by using concurrent tasks where possible

Features

• Lunar is now notarized and signed with a certificate bought from your donations! Thanks everyone!
• Added a polling interval in the Sync mode to adjust how fast Lunar syncs the built-in display brightness

Fixes

• Fix Start at Login functionality
• The available settings now change instantly when you change the mode
• Settings should save properly now
• Fix a few crashes in the C code for DDC (still a few to go, but new job, less time..)

Improvements

• Change help popovers font to something more legible
• Make help links clickable (somewhat)

Fixes

• Fix data store merge policy

Improvements

• Add help buttons with popovers for explaining settings and modes

Fixes

• Fix memory management of EDID data

Fixes

• Fix another case where UUID can't be allocated
• Fix display name detection
• Allow new monitor data to overwrite cached db rows

Features

• Make the UI larger to allow for more info and settings
• Add more annotations on the brightness chart

Fixes

• Fix cases where the UUID can't be allocated

Features

• Add customizable location coordinates
• Move updates to new domain: lunar.fyi

Fixes

• Revert DDC to C implementation with added multi-monitor support
• Fix 2.4.0 regression where only some types of connectors worked

Features

• Add diagnostic tools
  • You can now open Lunar menu and click on Open Lunar diagnostics to send me Lunar logs
• Complete multi-monitor support

Fixes

• Use system generated UUID to store settings per display

Improvements

• Convert to DDC handling code to Swift
• Store min/max settings as soon as they are changed

Fixes

• Use all EDID data to encode monitor IDs
  • this should allow Lunar to support multiple monitors of the same kind

Improvements

• Convert to Swift 5

Fixes

• Don't send DDC/CI request for locked value

Fixes

• Check chart entries bounds before updating

Improvements

• Move to edDSA key for signing updates

Fixes

• Use brightness/contrast offsets only in Sync mode

Features

• Smooth Transition option [Thanks to Tim Traversy! @timtraversy PR #14]
  • This makes the brightness/contrast change smoothly from a value to another, instead of jumping directly to that value
  • Check settings page to enable the option
  • I left it off by default because some monitors have a slow response time and smooth transitions end up not being so smooth
• Configurable interpolation factor for Location mode

Improvements

• Improve charts speed and efficiency with SIMD
• Smoother chart curves

Fixes

• Don't cap brightness/contrast on manual mode

Fixes

• Make the display page white when swiping back from settings
• Reflect hotkey changes on the menu items

Improvements

• Add button for going to hotkeys page

Fixes

• Make sure user can always swipe to settings page

Features

• Add page for configuring hotkeys
• Add menu item for toggling "Start at Login"

Fixes

• Remove SwiftyBeaver dependency from LunarService

Features

• Add hotkeys for increasing/decreasing brightness/contrast [Thanks Hua Duong Tran! @duongel PR #2]
• Add individual Lock Buttons for brightness and contrast

Improvements

• Offsets now work in Location mode too
• Manually adjusting brightness doesn't force Manual mode anymore

Fixes

• The Adaptive toggle below each monitor now works properly
• App Exceptions were not always working, fixed those cases

Improvements

• Set offset limits to [-100, 90]
• Adjust offsetting formula to get more symmetrical values

Fixes

• Fix a few crashes caused by backing layers and subviews not being available on load

Fixes

• Try not to insert nils in the database

Features

• Sync mode
• The external monitor's brightness/contrast will be kept in sync with the brightness/contrast of the built-in display
• The external monitor's brightness/contrast will still be kept within the configured per-monitor limits
• There are new configurable offsets on the settings page to make the synchronization perfect

Fixes

• Disable adaptive brightness when no monitor is connected to get to zero energy impact
• Fix interpolation formula
• Disable configurable values when Manual mode is on

Fixes

• Make sure Adaptive activity isn't scheduled more than once so that percent hotkeys work as expected
• Fix an error that prevented the settings to persist in the database

Fixes

• Fix stupid mistake that caused the app to crash for all users

Dev

• Add temporary remote logging to help fix some annoying crashes

Fixes

• Cap interpolated values between 0 - 100
• Fallback to generated display names as it is impossible to extract the real name

Dev

• Add more logging

Fixes

• Fix a crash when monitor serials aren't unique

Dev

• Add more context to help debugging errors

Fixes

• Fix compatibility with macOS 10.11

Additions

• Donation link

Fixes

• Try to get rid of crashes when readapting to max brightness change

Improvements

• Use sunrise/sunset instead of civilSunrise/civilSunset

Fixes

• Fixed crash on missing time for sunrise
• Better check cases where Add App button layer isn't initialized
• Make sure brightness/contrast changes contain both old and new values