Most users don't need to do much. You may wish to set the sunrise time to something more like 9am if you're a night owl (or 4am if you tend to get up really early!).
Then finally, click "Send window to tray" to send the window to the tray at the bottom right of the screen to get it out the way.
More thorough instructions:
Sunrise time: Set this to the time you usually get up in the morning or maybe a bit earlier. People who work night shifts can set it to something more like 6pm (instead of AM).
Delay until sunset: This works well if you leave it at the default 12 hours. Maybe try 13 or 14 if you have less than 8-10 hours of sleep. Trial and error works well here.
Transition phase: By default this is set to 60 minutes which allows for a nice slow fade from the day colour to the night colour.
Send window to tray: Move the window to the tray so you can forget it, and concentrate on other things! You may want to tick "Load on Win startup" first if you want it to load every time Windows starts up.
Load on Win startup: Tick this to have SunsetScreen load every time Windows starts up.
Running: Immediately turn SunsetScreen on or off. A shortcut for this is defined in the "More options" window.
Colour changing tabs - "Night colour" and "Day colour":
- Switch between these to alter the night and day colours.
Night/Day preset: Feel free to experiment with the different colours possible. If you want to have a greater chance of a good sleep, make this is as orange/red and as dark as you can bear. Obviously, there's a compromise between usability and feeling as restful as possible in the evening, so try them each out.
Sunset/sunrise colour: This is the so-called 'colour temperature'. Lower numbers are 'warmer' (suitable for the night) and higher numbers are 'cooler' (suitable for day). If you want the screen as normal, select 6600K (available from the presets).
Brightness: Represents how dim the screen is. There's also an independent 'Master Brightness' setting which is controlled only via certain hotkeys (open the "More options" window to discover these).
Default: Resets the colour back to default for that period of day.
HSB sliders (advanced): If you want finer control of what colour you want during the night or day, make sure you tick this and experiment with the three new sliders. It's possible to match the hue and saturation of your light bulb precisely, and make the monitor look more like paper as a result!
"More options" button/window:
Show detailed info: Displays extra info such as the sunset/sunrise time, master brightness, time zone and more.
Check for screen interruption: Some PCs reset the orange colour back to normal white if you lock the PC and wake it up (or if a UAC prompt appears). SunsetScreen tried to mitigate this behaviour by refreshing the screen every 5 seconds (editable). CPU usage is minimal, so don't worry too much about leaving the tick enabled if your PC has this issue.
Shortcuts: Control SunsetScreen via the keyboard via Alt+PageUp (increase brightness), Alt+PageDown (decrease brightness), and Alt+/ (toggle SunsetScreen on/off). The parameter 'masterBrightnessIncrement' is an advanced option, and can only be edited for now in the 'SunsetScreenPrefs.txt' file. It controls the degree of brightness up/down when you press Alt+PageUp or AltPageDown.
Brightness increment for hotkeys: This is the amount of brightness that is increased or decrease when you use the Master Brightness hotkeys.
Global hotkeys: Hotkeys for various functions in SunsetScreen. Click in the boxes shown, and either stick with the existing hotkeys, or choose a custom hotkey (e.g: Ctrl+L) for each action shown. Make sure to trick the checkbox to activate the hotkey.
Tips and research:
To expand the range of colours and enable the brightness and HSB controls, look out for the orange button at the bottom of the window (appears when SunsetScreen can't properly change the screen's colour). The way SunsetScreen achieves this is by writing a registry key to allow Windows to obtain darker shades. This key is written to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ICM\GdiIcmGammaRange
If you somehow find Sunsetscreen is not working for you, maybe try shortcuts Ctrl + Shift + F1/F2/F3/F4 (four modes) to try different versions of how Sunsetscreen changes the screen. A message will pop up showing it has changed mode.
On versions earlier than 1.20, if you find that the computer returns to default colours after waking up (or from a UAC prompt), upgrade to version 1.27!
Multi-monitor support is limited in Sunsetscreen as it's hard to implement. However, maybe try shortcuts Ctrl + Shift + F1/F2/F3/F4 (four modes) to try different versions of how Sunsetscreen changes the screen.
