When comparing TotalTerminal vs F.lux, the Slant community recommends TotalTerminal for most people. In the question“What are the best power user tools for macOS?” TotalTerminal is ranked 20th while F.lux is ranked 26th. The most important reason people chose TotalTerminal is:
TotalTerminal is a plugin for Terminal.app. It provides persistent Visor Window which slides down when you press a hot-key.
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Pros
Pro Allows quick access to the terminal system-wide
TotalTerminal is a plugin for Terminal.app. It provides persistent Visor Window which slides down when you press a hot-key.
Pro Quake style window show/hide
You maybe know or don't know Quake from Id Software. But this game had the best idea to hide/show a terminal window. Simply using full width but 26 rows. On show the widow slid down from top of screen. On hide it mode up to top edge of the screen until it disappeared. 2nd next best was the semi translucent background. You could still see through the terminal window while it was shown.
The same style is now available in TotalTerminal and iTerm2 (OSX Terminal replacement - no Terminal plugin).
Pro Can help sleep better
Helps provide better sleep for more energy during the day.
Pro Eases eye strain
Decreases color temperature at night, changing the normally fluorescent blue of an LCD monitor to a soft orange. Much easier on the eyes, especially in a low-light environment.
Pro Subtle transition
The transition from daytime to nighttime color modes takes an hour by default and will detect your current timezone, meaning that it will happen in the background at sunset, often without you noticing.
Cons
Con No longer under active development
Con Doesn't work on El Capitan with SIP on
Apple introduced a new security feature in OSX El Capitan, called System Integrity Protection, that, among other things, does not allow augmenting Terminal. While it's possible to turn SIP off (instructions on how to turn off SIP and get TotalTerminal working on El Capitan can be found here) it is not recommended.
Con Takes a while to get used to
After installing F.lux, the screen will look a lot more yellow. This takes about a week to fully get used to. You can ease into it by setting the color temps higher than the recommended defaults.