Sent this to my wife and we talked a bit about how I don't like lights on.
I realized that even when I'm home alone at night (and not taking care so that she doesn't wake up), I will use the flashlight/torch on my cell phone rather than turn on lights in the house.
Well, it's nice that you two found a common ground here, wife and husband. It is a bit weird you did so by communicating via Lemmy comments, but's great if this works for you. ;)
My husband isn't on Lemmy, lol. I was just pointing out that my house has a similar light dynamic as this guy's. And that sometimes it's the wife with the light sensitivity. And yes, I know I'm weird for it compared to other people. :)
I have my phone's flashlight hooked up to the extra button that was supposed to be for an ai assistant, and I use it more than every other non-keyboard button on every other device I own combined.
Not only am I more comfortable in the natural light/darkness, I never need to make a return trip to turn the lights out.
Samsung? Not a fan of the Bixby AI that's going to take the world by storm?
Do you have a way to set a timer on it or does it only turn on while you hold the button? I'd worry about accidental triggering (since I do accidentally trigger that bitch Bixby every once in awhile.)
Bixby is the one yeah. Until AI assistants can ask clarifying questions and replicate arbitrary actions, they'll just get in my way.
As for the method, I use bxActions to remap buttons. You can add an action for a single press, a double press, a long press, and a double press and hold, and then a different set of actions on the lockscreen too.
Single press does indeed get pressed accidentally sometimes, so I have that as Media play/pause. Flashlight gets put on long press, which has extra functionality; if you release as soon as it comes on, it's a toggle, but if you keep holding the button it will turn off when you release it. Very convenient. The double press and double hold set screen rotation, although I don't use then very often. Double press on the lockscreen opens the camera.
You can add lots of other actions too, like an extra bright flashlight (both flashlights automatically turn off after 5 minutes), launch apps, switch apps, take a screenshot, use google assistant instead, set sound setting (like do not disturb, or IOS mode), other media buttons, volume buttons, home button, back button, open some system utilities, change one handed mode, toggle the screen (like pressing the power button), toggle fullscreen, and do some notification managment. Oh, and did I mention you can rebind the volume buttons too? That's 24 different actions you can bind.
Only issue I've had is it's not a system service, so android likes to kill it when it gets low on battery or RAM. But that's a problem for every custom service.
TL;DR: Both. Flashlight gets a 5 minute timer, and I also have it on a long press.
Interesting. Unfortunately it seems they've made this much more difficult in newer phones. That app doesn't run on S23 and it seems like the available ones that do can't manipulate the power button.
Dimmable RGB LED bulbs are for this. One command can turn on all the lights to 100% in soft white color. Another can set them all to 1% and orange color. The color change makes the room even darker than just setting the lights to 1% at normal color.
That’s the family-friendly version anyway. If I’m the only one up, I’m totally content with everything off.
Turning on the lights in the room at night, especially when you’re trying to go to sleep, is going to be far more disruptive for you mentally. So it actually makes a lot more sense to use a small light just to spot what you need to and then quickly turn it off after