Flux Like Automatic Screen Brightness App Flexbright Now Available In The App Store

Update: As we expected, FlexBright has been removed from the App Store this morning. That didn’t take long at all.

Despite earlier actions against similar apps, Apple has recently approved an app called FlexBright that adjusts the brightness and color temperature of your iPhone or iPad’s display depending on the time of day. While Apple introduced a feature like this with iOS 9.3, the company has previously refused to allow the popular Flux app in the App Store, which provides similar functionality.

FlexBright is $2.99 in the App Store and was recently updated to version 2.0, adding some of the brightness features. The app offers the ability to adjust the brightness and color temperature of your device’s display automatically. The app takes into account the sunset and sunrise times to do so. FlexBright also offers what it calls a “smart eye strain calculator” to keep track of how long you’ve looked at bright blue light. The app will then alert you if it detects eye fatigue.

There’s also a dark mode that changes the colors of the interface on your phone to black and white, similar to the Dark Mode on OS X.

Like Flux and Night Shift, FlexBright touts the health benefits its app offers:

Last November, Flux became available via sideloading for iOS users, but within a day, Apple shut them down, leaving Flux to argue that it would be willing to work with Apple to get the app on the App Store. Shortly thereafter, Apple introduced Night Shift, which is very similar to Flux. Flux responded to the feature by saying it clearly is the “original innovator and leader” in the market.

FlexBright will continuously monitor your exposure to blue light from your device and prompt you to change brightness if high eyestrain is detected.The app will also allows you to automatically adjust the brightness of your screen based on time of the day.

Despite a lot of similarities, FlexBright offers a few features different from Night Shift. For one, it offers a Dark Mode, while iOS natively does not. The app is also offers push notification support for reminding you to change your display’s brightness or temperature if  you’ve been using it for an extended period of time.

While it’s likely that FlexBright will get removed from the App Store sooner rather than later, you can still download it now and keep it, even if it’s removed.