When comparing F.lux vs TextWrangler, the Slant community recommends F.lux for most people. In the question“What are the best power user tools for macOS?” F.lux is ranked 26th while TextWrangler is ranked 65th. The most important reason people chose F.lux is:
Helps provide better sleep for more energy during the day.
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Pros
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.
Pro Fast to start up
It starts up fast because is not bloated. It has all the essentials of a text editor.
Pro Free
Free but capable alternative to BBEdit.
Pro Built-in FTP/STFP browser
Edit remote files easily.
Pro Robust
Cons
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.
Con No Longer Maintained
Bare Bones, the developers of TextWranger, recently ended maintenance and support for the product. Per the Bare Bones website (https://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/): "We have sunsetted TextWrangler, and we encourage anyone interested in TextWrangler to download and use BBEdit instead."
Con Not Compatible with macOS High Sierra (10.13+)
Per the Bare Bones website (https://www.barebones.com/support/new-os.html): "TextWrangler is not compatible with High Sierra. We suggest that you use BBEdit as an alternative . . . ." Since Bare Bones officially sunsetted the product, it will unlikely be compatible with subsequent macOS release versions either.