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Premise: All OS functionality is code
Conclusion: I must have a way to emulate said code.

I would like to figure out how to have the exact same brightening/dimming display mechanism currently mapped to F1/F2 on my keyboard but via Terminal. I've googled and found a number of references to pmset, which is fascinating, but not the same goal.

Any thoughts on bash/c++ or other cli-based tools I can use to dim or brighten my display in OSx 10.6.7?

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  • 1
    I have no idea about the topic, but a quick Google yields mattdanger.net/2008/12/…. Does this have anything to do with what you're asking for?
    – Vervious
    Jul 12, 2011 at 5:47
  • 1
    Your question is perfectly on topic here, no need to be migrated.
    – slhck
    Jul 12, 2011 at 7:02
  • @slhck - thanks! @Nano - that was the first thing I found! It looks potentially utilize-able, but seemed like a great deal more effort than I expected. The heart of my Q here is how can you emulate the output of tapping F1? It must be possible... or so I continue to stubbornly assume.
    – mbb
    Jul 12, 2011 at 14:39
  • Also, the mattdanger concludeds with adding in a boot up hook. I would like to have more of a readily-available CLI call.
    – mbb
    Jul 12, 2011 at 14:43
  • You only need the login hook if you want a specific brightness upon booting. /path/to/brightness just refers to where you install that program. This is your readily-available CLI call. Except for the IODisplaySetFloatParameterfunction call (and determining which display, if it's not all of them) , it's all boilerplate code.
    – Daniel Beck
    Aug 30, 2011 at 6:53

1 Answer 1

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Based on the brightness program from @Nano8Blazex's comment, that is assumed to be installed on your $PATH:

Add the following lines to .bash_profile (assuming bash shell) and you can then use dim and lighten as commands for F1 and F2, respectively. Both work only on display 0 as listed by brightness -l.

function modify_brightness {
    local delta=$1
    current=$( brightness -l | grep "display 0: brightness" | cut -d" " -f4 )
    #echo "Current brightness is $current"
    new=$( echo "$current+($delta)" | bc )
    #echo "New brightness is $new"
    COMMAND="brightness -d 0 $new"
    #echo "Executing $COMMAND"
    $COMMAND
}

function dim {
    modify_brightness -0.0625
}

function brighten {
    modify_brightness 0.0625
}
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  • Great choice. I'm running down a rat hole of needing to find a gcc option for 10.6 OSX w/o Xcode, but I'll just find my boot dvd and install it. Cheers.
    – mbb
    Sep 4, 2011 at 21:14
  • @mjb That blog page contains a download link for the compiled binary.
    – Daniel Beck
    Sep 4, 2011 at 21:21

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