FIRST, IT WOULD BE NICE IF THE DROP DOWN SELECTION FOR CATEGORY, PRODUCTS, TOPICS OR APPS ACTUALLY MENTION THE CREATOR EDITION SO AN APPROPRIATE SELECTION COULD BE MADE!
NOTE: This only occurs when the Night Light state should be ON for night hours! The default for OFF occurs without regard to settings state on boot up! Except, at night, the state indicates Night Light is ON, when it is NOT ON! The virtual state of the switch does not indicate the actual physical state of the machine!
If my computer is shut down, and I start it during night hours... like right now, Night Light doesn't activate without me, the user, going into settings and toggling ON/OFF state, even though setting are set, and the state says it is on.
The settings are set for Night Light to operate from Sunset fo Sunrise, yet, when booting, I always have to toggle. This not working properly and is defeating the purpose of the night light. If I wake up in the middle of the night, and since I have night light, I know I could use the computer with the light dimmed, and it doesn't completely wake me up; but, since it doesn't work, I get hit with the bright glare which wakes me up more than I'd like by the time I get to the settings to make it turn on.
HOW DO I FIX THIS ISSUE?
Read further, before assuming you understand the issue....
I would think this would have been a no brainer testing done during development. I'm also pretty sure this also doesn't work if the computer falls asleep during daylight hours, and I return to wake it up from sleep during night hours, the night light also doesn't work then. Same for hibernate. It does seem to work, though it lags, if the power state is only in the screen saver state, but only after the machine goes out of screen saver mode... this is acceptable to me. Night light's ability to determine actual 'physical state' of the machine is intolerable.
The only time the night light seems to work is if the machine is powered up, and active, and the timer crosses the time threshold, but even this appears to be intermittent. For example, I'm on the machine and using it, and it gets dark out and I notice the night light is not working. In this case, it's not so bad as I'm hours from going to sleep. But, the bottom line is that this "feature" is really buggy; however, if the computer is active, yet idle, not sleeping or hibernating, or in screen saver mode, the night light eventually comes on as indicated by the status, like it really DOES have the ability to know the state "ON" indicated is not the physical state! OR, there is a huge lag between the night light actually coming on, and the state indicated in settings.
I've looked through TechNet, and this forum, and frankly all the Microsoft Technicians are either in denial, or assume it's a user error. So apparently as far as Microsoft knows, it's not their problem, it's a machine problem, and yet I've not once seen an answer that really answers the question. The assumption is a user failure to set the settings. THIS IS NOT THE CASE HERE!
Sure, I can see that a game might not allow night light to come on (ex: Minecraft, WoW, etc.), as games usually have a vice grip hold on the graphics card, but, I also have seen various questions similar to mine, with flippant answers.
Admittedly it's difficult to word the problem so it's understood correctly. Simply stating Night Light is not working as intended or implied by Microsoft, we know there's no guarantee to fitness or suitability of purpose. But, there also appears to be no guarantee that they'll fix it. That leaves the only possible solution, according to Microsoft, is that it's a personal hardware problem, and yet no one has a clue about what about some hardware problem might actually be causing it.
I think this is one of the better ideas that Microsoft has come up with, and in fact, it is the primary reason I wanted the creator's update. I often work late hours, and my sleep schedule is wacky, and IMHO I've always thought a bright screen was the culprit, or certainly a mitigating factor.
Bottom line, in my machine, new off the shelf, Night Light is unable to recognize its current state, and whatever processes that run during boot up don't pass through any process that recognize that Night Light is in the incorrect state. The irony of this is that when one goes to settings, and examines the Night Light status, it indicates that the night light is working, when it is not! Then, to make matters worse, if one clicks the ON/OFF button, the button turns OFF; but, the night light turns ON! So, everything about the system indicates that night light is working properly, except the fact that it actually doesn't work.
Truth is, this reminds me very much about the old update issues with the old suitcase files that were supposed to stay synced. It's similar in that the system doesn't know it needs to do anything because the status says it's working, and when it checks to see if it should activate the night light, it sees that it is ON, and it's the right time to be ON, and it does nothing. Like knowing when to sync a file, because the OS thought that the changed file was already synced, and so sync didn't work. (A who is the master issue) This indicates to me that either when the process initially runs and turns on the Night Light, toggles the switch to indicate it's on, it isn't actually able to control the hardware at that time in the boot process. In other words, Night Light should be on a delayed startup, before checking its status. The old.. new problem, the boot process is so fast, the hardware is lagging possibly.
Will it ever get fixed is questionable, especially if Microsoft has no way to know the actual state of the night light. The ON/OFF switch is not an indicator of the current status! If that's the case, then I suggest a shortcut, if possible, to the toggle that turns night light ON or OFF, that way when we boot, and it's not working, the switch to fix it is handy and right on the desktop, no drill down required. Perhaps, the 'initial' status check should be delayed until just before or after the icons appear properly filled on the desktop?!
* Moved from Insider
