Even better command line control for Logitech’s Litra line
A while back I wrote about a piece of software that let you control Logitech’s Litra Glow camera via Shortcuts. But recently I came across an even better option that’s even easier to use and set up.
Developer Tim Rogers’s litra-rs project on GitHub is a freely available command-line tool for controlling not only the Litra Glow but the Litra Beam and Beam LX key lights. By specifying command line options you can turn the light on or off, toggle the power, and adjust both brightness and color temperature as either an absolute value or relative to the current setting. You can even get all the information about your currently connected devices—including having it provided in JSON in case you want to more easily connect to some external apps.
Most convenient of all, it’s available via homebrew, making it a snap to install and set up.1
On its own, this would be good enough; it’s a simple matter to write a shortcut or use some other utility to easily control these features from a keyboard shortcut or the Stream Deck. However, Rogers also offers a second app called litra-autotoggle that makes life even easier: it automatically turns on the light whenever you activate your webcam and turns it off when you’re done.
I love this: the only thing better than making these devices easier to use is making it so I don’t have to think about it at all. There are some additional options to require that a device be present or only work with a specific light or camera on your set up, but otherwise it just chugs along in the background and doesn’t bother you.
I’d still love to see a GUI wrapper for this app to make it easier to adjust brightness and temperature without having to figure out numerical values or resort to Logitech’s own not great software, but for the moment, this setup makes life way easier for my videoconferencing life.
- There’s also a precompiled binary, source code, and installation via Cargo, if that’s how you roll. ↩
[Dan Moren is the East Coast Bureau Chief of Six Colors, as well as an author, podcaster, and two-time Jeopardy! champion. You can find him on Mastodon at @dmoren@zeppelin.flights or reach him by email at dan@sixcolors.com. His latest novel, the sci-fi spy thriller The Armageddon Protocol, is out now.]
If you appreciate articles like this one, support us by becoming a Six Colors subscriber. Subscribers get access to an exclusive podcast, members-only stories, and a special community.