8

I am using a macbook pro running OSX 10.6 snow leopard.

In System Preferences/Displays/Display, I can change the brightness of the macbook's screen. However, this option is not available for the external monitor.

Is there a way to change the brightness of an external monitor without resorting to changing the settings manually on the monitor itself ?

This happens using both of the mini-displayports adapters (DVI & VGA)

7 Answers 7

5

You cannot do this from System Preferences because the video adapters do not have an interface into the brightness controls of the external monitor.

Sorry, but adjusting manually on the monitor is the only way.

5

Try the preference pane Shades

There is also Dark Adapted, which will change many more aspects of each screen independently, but it is not longer supported (though it works with lion)

1
  • 1
    Works great! This should be the reaccepted answer.
    – gak
    May 15, 2012 at 7:55
5

In 2020, there are at least two options:

  1. Lunar - https://lunar.fyi/
  2. MonitorControl - https://formulae.brew.sh/cask/monitorcontrol

My setup is a 2013 MacBook Pro with Mojave, connected to two relatively new ViewSonic VA2359 monitors –– one through Thunderbolt, and the other through HDMI.

Lunar successfully changes the brightness of both flawlessly, though the sync option to adjust the externals based on the setting of the built-in display doesn't seem to be reliable. Still, you can adjust both contrast and brightness from a handy menu bar.

I tried MonitorControl, but while it detected both monitors with separate IDs, changing the brightness on either only affected one.

2
  • Lunar is awesome. Thanks! Sep 20, 2020 at 16:59
  • I was not expecting that! I thought a specific Monitor was required! MonitorControl is pretty cool (didn't try Lunar). Thanks!
    – 118218
    Dec 10, 2020 at 7:18
2

Use my own fork of Brightness Menulet

It supports auto adjustment based on the ambient light sensor

Link: http://github.com/MuhammadHewedy/BrightnessMenulet

1
  • From @wise_rice: Your fork is awesome and works great with the ambient light sensor! But it does not set the brightness to the lowest or the highest possible values. Only to like 20% and 55%. It would be lovely to have it Set to 1% or even 0% (that is still bright at night on my Dell U2515H) and to 90% at very bright daylight. Can I change that somewhere in the code? (I am not a pro, but I have xCode and all that installed. How do I create an app-build out of your github code with xcode?)
    – fixer1234
    Sep 1, 2015 at 8:12
1

If you are using an Apple external Display you can use Control-F1 and Control-F2

0

...and here's another way I found. You can open the display prefs and drag the menu bar object to the display you want to adjust in the "Arrangement" pane. At that point, the plain F1/F2 will adjust that display's brightness setting. (In most modern versions of OSX the menu bar object is almost irrelevant anyway as the menus are on all displays and whichever one you're on hosts the active set.)

This way is particularly useful if you have more than one external display (e.g. daisy chained Apple thunderbolt monitors) where the notion of main (F1/F2) and external (ctrl-F1/crtl-F2) breaks down as there's no shortcut for the 2nd external display or presumably other's beyond even that...

1
  • I have this issue and your reply looks useful, but "drag the menu bar object" - not sure what's meant here? Jan 23, 2019 at 16:10
0

If you plug in a keyboard that has brightness control buttons AND plug the USB plug from the display to your MacBook pro, you can adjust the brightness.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .