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I usually just use Fn + Left or Fn + Right to adjust my screen's brightness but the minimum settings are still too bright for me (especially when I'm working at night). I tried going through the Power Options in the Control Panel (plan brightness already at the lowest settings). Is there a way to dim my laptop's screen beyond the minimum?

I'm already using Fl.ux. I was wondering if there was a utility similar to it that adjusts my screen's brightness/contrast instead of its color temperature.

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Can you still buy filters for screens? They were around in the old CRT days. I suppose sunglasses would make it difficult to see the keys at night. – pavium Jul 9 '11 at 9:43
I have considered buying filters. And I do have my sunglasses on standby. I was hoping for something similar to Flux. – Kaze Jul 9 '11 at 9:46
Mentioning the used software will help out the answers not to be redundant. – avirk Jun 21 '12 at 4:48
iBrightness is the only one I can remember. – ekaj Jun 21 '12 at 5:11
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Sunglasses might be a solution. I wonder if you could get one of those old glare screens and cover it with something that reduces transmitted light as well. Might help to state, desktop or laptop, and if its the former, the model of the screen in the question.Some things i can think of deal with things specific to monitor and software – Journeyman Geek Jun 21 '12 at 5:17
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10 Answers

up vote 10 down vote accepted

Flux doesn't really dim the screen, just changes the color temperature (I like it, but you have to be careful with photoediting etc).

Dimmer does dim (by the looks of it it's very similar to the above mentioned DimScreen) and it's free.

From the site:

Overview

Dimmer is a very small and free piece of software designed to provide brightness reduction on LCD screens, TFT screens and LED screens when it either don't have, or lack proper brightness control. A must have if you work on your computer at night with very low ambient light. The reason I mention LCD's, TFT's or LED's is because these are the flat panels we all have on our laptops or notebooks and usually are limited and can't be dimmed very low. The desktop versions and the old CRT type monitors did not suffer from this limitation.

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I tried everything but Dimmer is the best! – aalaap Oct 19 '12 at 12:05
up vote 11 down vote

You can get more control over the display colors when using the Display color calibration utility :

( from the run box, type: dccw.exe )

enter image description here

the problem is there is no shortcut to toggle between different profiles.

I just come up with this little utility dispcalGUI, (with endless options) pretty neat !enter image description here

it can be the solution.

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+1 Wow, thanks for sharing the utility! I'm going to download it and play with the settings. – Kaze Jul 9 '11 at 17:59
I didn't succeed to make it work on my machine (port thing), however there is complete instruction on how to deploy it, tell me it you get something – Revolter Jul 9 '11 at 19:19
up vote 1 down vote

I looked quickly and didn't find any info if your monitor is a led based one or not. Some older monitors have fluorescent tube for lights (I think) and those probably have a pretty high lowest brightness setting. So if you have that type of monitor you are probably not going to have any luck making it darker through settings.

So you alternative is probably a privacy filter. I have one for my computer at work. It made the screen quite noticeably darker. Although those filters will make the screen harder to read from certain angles, it might still be what you need.

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up vote 1 down vote

I've heard good things about f.lux. It's a piece of software that dims your computer screen according to the time of day, to help simulate natural light. That sounds like it's exactly what you're after, as it'll keep things dim at night, while having considerably less of an effect during the day.

Alternatively, use it as my (exceedingly photosensitive) partner does on her laptop: crank up all the settings to their extremes, disable the timer, and just use it as a global setting for dropping the brightness on your monitor

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I tried f.lux, but I didn't like the weird colors it used. – ekaj Jun 22 '12 at 0:37
up vote 1 down vote

Have you tried Dimscreen from the donation coder? http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Skrommel/index.html#DimScreen

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up vote 1 down vote

there is a program PowerStrip that let's you set many visual configuration profiles and you can add shortcuts to them. I find it very useful in games or movies. The program does more than that so it's very useful.

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up vote 0 down vote

Took me a while but I found this portable app called DimScreen through this site, which does exactly what I need.

After launching it, it shows an icon on the System Tray that gives "dimness" levels for me to choose from. The higher the value I pick, the darker my screen gets (beyond the minimum that Fn + Left gives me).

enter image description here

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Hmm just downloaded this and when I tried to install the screen dimmed but no installer started up... – hippietrail Aug 1 '11 at 10:00
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That's why it's called a portable app. It doesn't install. – Kaze Aug 1 '11 at 14:31
Hmm good point put it certainly looked exactly like the dimming an installer does (90% ish) and I couldn't find anything in the system tray to control it. PS in my day all apps were portable d-; – hippietrail Aug 1 '11 at 14:56
I see. The icon looks looks like a black box. When I ran it the first time, the icon was hidden. I had to set it to "Only show notifications." I wish there was a better app though. But I guess it still helps keep eyestrain at bay for me for a while. – Kaze Aug 1 '11 at 15:04
OK it worked when I tried it now thanks for making me give it another go. I'll have to wait for my "stuck dimmed" problem to recur though to see if it works to resolve that though. – hippietrail Aug 1 '11 at 16:42
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up vote 0 down vote

I'd suggest you try to change your system's color metrics now, since you're already using it at lowest brightness possible. I used to have this trouble too, but then I moved on to working in evening time(from 4 to 12).

Otherwise, as StampedeXV mentioned, buy a newer screen(maybe even a LED TV which may perform as per your needs?).

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up vote 0 down vote

Assuming that it is not a limitation of the hardware and/or driver, then you can use Nirsoft’s NirCmd to adjust the screen brightness up or down to whatever the video-adapter is capable of.

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I think the best program for this purpose for Windows is Gapa. I downloaded it somewhere long time ago and now I can't find any download link or webpage. The software is from some guy "Tomasz Porosinski".

Anyway, I can share my Dropbox link with you. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/47390289/SuperUser/Gapa/gapa.zip

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