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I have a manufacturer-unlocked Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge (purchased directly from samsung.com), which came with Marshmallow but has been updated OTA to 7.0 Nougat, and is not rooted.
One new feature Marshmallow brings is the Blue Light Filter, which has options for automatically turning on and off, either according to a schedule you specify, or at night based on your local sunset and sunrise.

I'm using the latter option, and while I've found the filter to reliably turn on every day at sunset, I frequently have to manually turn it off the next day. It's not 100% of the time though, and in fact, on rare occasions, I have woken up before sunrise and been using my phone when the filter suddenly turned off, so I know it is at least capable of working properly. (Note that it has never, to my knowledge, failed to turn on at sunset, regardless of whether I'm using it at that time or not.) I'm speculating that maybe it's failing to turn off if the phone is in deep sleep mode at sunrise. The times of sunset and sunrise are determined based on your location, so an as-yet-unnoticed issue with Location Services could theoretically be a factor as well.

I did a Google search and was able to find informational articles about the feature in general, as well as multiple forum posts from users experiencing problems getting the feature to turn on or work at all, but found no reports of it otherwise working properly, but not automatically turning off.

Am I the only one experiencing this issue? Is it something specific to the S7 Edge, or to Samsung builds in general, or is the same problem known to occur on other devices? And of course, most importantly: How can I get the Blue Light Filter to reliably turn off at sunrise?

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  • I, unfortunately, don't have an answer for you. I have an S8 and mine was working flawlessly until I recently wiped my device and reinstalled everything. My S8 is now doing exactly what you are describing. I see your post is quite old and wondered if you figured it out on your phone? Previous to my S8 I also had an S7E that did the same thing. Thanks. Paul J Reed
    – Paul Reed
    Jan 1, 2018 at 16:17
  • I never did figure it out, no, but it seems to have stopped occurring, because I'd forgotten about this post! My only guess is that either: an OTA software update fixed it; some app was interfering, which I've since uninstalled; or something deep down in either the power-saving or app permissions menus was responsible (I've messed around with each several times since I last recall experiencing the issue).
    – Dan Henderson
    Jan 1, 2018 at 16:46
  • @PaulReed See the answer I just posted. Haven't investigated it more deeply to verify that this is indeed the cause, but it's an educated guess. The problem resurfaced at one point and I think that sometime before that I had gone through and made some pretty extensive changes to the advanced options of the power-saving and other Samsung-provided device management features, in trying to troubleshoot some other issue.
    – Dan Henderson
    Jun 13, 2018 at 15:07

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It turns out that it seems to be related to the power-saving features on the S7. Apparently at some point, the background process that automatically turns the filter on and off at scheduled times got added to the list of processes to be managed by the power-saving mechanism, after which point, any time my phone was in power-saving mode and had not been used recently, the scheduled toggle of the filter's state would not fire. I'm assuming that was just never the case at sunset, as I'm much more likely to have used my phone recently at sunset than at sunrise.

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The times of sunset and sunrise are determined based on your location, so an as-yet-unnoticed issue with Location Services could theoretically be a factor as well.

This is indeed another possible cause.

This sometimes happens on my Google Pixel 3a with the equivalent Night Light feature since I usually turn off the location service. It seems when the current location is very stale/outdated, the feature will be automatically paused.

When this happens, I can just turn on the location service for a moment and wait until the device is located, then the Night Light will be enabled/disabled automatically again, then I can turn off the location service afterward.

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  • +1 . on Android 13 Pixel6a, I have turned off location services but yes night light still works likely because in the sub menu "Google location accuracy" is enabled
    – beeshyams
    Aug 7 at 14:33
  • Disabled Google location accuracy and set night light to start a few minutes later.. It gave me warnings but then turned night light on time! Vagaries of versions 😏
    – beeshyams
    Aug 7 at 14:47
  • But then, this needs to observed (turns stale ss you say)
    – beeshyams
    Aug 7 at 14:53
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    @beeshyams yeah, based on my personal observation, "stale" might mean "more than 3 days or even 1 week", then it suddenly didn't turn on/kept turned on, either at sunset or sunrise.
    – Andrew T. ♦
    Aug 7 at 14:55
  • guess stale time depends on Android version too (on 13 now) . Device location has been off for 3 weeks now, "sunset to sunrise" works though I'm settings of schedule it flipped on it's own to "none"
    – beeshyams
    Sep 1 at 10:11

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