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Is there any way I could adjust screen brightness directly from the tray by clicking the battery icon and moving a slider in the window that pops up (below)?

Having to click "Adjust screen brightness" gets annoying as I have to do it often now, the Fn shortcut key on my keyboard doesn't work in Windows 8. :\ So I'm hoping to adjust it directly from the pop-up.

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  • 1
    There is a brightness slider in Windows 8's settings charm.
    – gronostaj
    Aug 8, 2014 at 12:24

5 Answers 5

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  • iBrightness might be what you're looking for:

    1 2

  • Of course there are various other apps (although perhaps not providing direct access via a popup) that are progressively ugly in terms of UI, such as Display Tuner, ScreenBright, Desktop Lighter...

    3 4 5

  • You can also create shortcuts with keyboard shortcuts to NirCmd, and in the Target field specify parameters such as changebrightness <level> (where level can be +ve or -ve). The following commands will even automate the creation of the shortcuts for you (edit as required):

    nircmd.exe cmdshortcutkey "~$folder.desktop$" "Decrease Brightness" "Ctrl+Alt+F9" changebrightness -10
    nircmd.exe cmdshortcutkey "~$folder.desktop$" "Increase Brightness" "Ctrl+Alt+F10" changebrightness 10
    
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  • +1 since it works, though I'm not very fond of adding single-purpose icons to the notification area. Still much better than nothing though, thanks!
    – user541686
    Feb 18, 2013 at 19:24
  • Is iBrightnessTray a trojan horse? virustotal.com/en/file/…
    – user541686
    Feb 22, 2013 at 0:26
  • I doubt it. The only 2 AVs that found something suspicious are eSafe and Ikarus, neither of which I have even heard about. Everything else failed to find anything amiss, so probably these two just couldn't handle the UPX compression. What does your AV say?
    – Karan
    Feb 22, 2013 at 0:31
  • I don't run an anti-virus normally, but today I heard about HitmanPro and thought I'd have it perform a one-time scan of my computer, and this is what it found as a threat. :| I'm guessing it's a false positive but it was still suspicious...
    – user541686
    Feb 22, 2013 at 0:42
  • 1
    On Windows 8.1 you have to enable Windows 8 compatibility mode for iBrightness, otherwise it crashes a second after pointing at its icon.
    – gronostaj
    May 1, 2015 at 13:58
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As of June of 2013, if you have a Surface with a Touch cover you can also use Fn + Del and Fn + Backspace to adjust brightness.

Other shortcuts include:

  • Fn + Caps: Locks F1-F12 into being function keys.
  • Fn + Spacebar: Print Screen
  • Fn + Spacebar + Alt: Print Screen for the in-focus app only
  • Fn + Del: Brightness Up
  • Fn + Backspace: Brightness Down
  • Fn + left: Home
  • Fn + right: End
  • Fn + up: Page Up
  • Fn + down: Page Down

http://www.wpcentral.com/new-hot-keys-and-functionality-coming-surface-keyboards-next-week

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If you use a laptop, you can quickly access settings (for example, speaker volume, wireless network connection status, and display brightness) in Windows Mobility Center.

Windows Mobility Center is not available in the Windows 7 Starter edition. enter image description here

You can run Windows Mobility Center with following ways (This is available only on laptops):

  1. Press Win+X(for Windows 7 and Vista)
  2. Press Win+R and run %SystemRoot%\System32\mblctr.exe
  3. Create shortcut on desktop then enter mblctr in the place of type the location of the item. You can also add hotkey to this shortcut.

On desktop this tool can be enabled via registry, but its pretty useless if dont add custom tiles.

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  • That is pretty awesome, I didn't know about that little tool. You can even pin it to the taskbar, that's 2 clicks to adjust brightness without installing a third party tool. Aug 14, 2014 at 20:03
  • can you confirm Win+X shortcut run Mobility Center on laptop? Cause on my Desktop PC this shortcut dont work. Aug 15, 2014 at 4:41
  • No, it doesn't run it directly. For me, Win+X just opens a shortcut menu in the bottom left corner from where you can open several maintenance tools. Aug 15, 2014 at 6:10
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Check out PangoBright

enter image description here

It's awesome, easy, free, and works with multiple monitors. File size: 115k

If you have a second monitor, you'll see the additional options:

"☑ Affect Monitor 1"
"☑ Affect Monitor 2"

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@gronostaj's suggestion in the comments to use the charms menu was useful to me even though it doesn't technically meet the parameters specified in the question. I thought I'd write a brief answer explaining how to maximize its efficiency:

You can quickly access the charms menu by using the shortcut Windows+C and then pressing twice and then Enter to select the Settings section. Once there, the brightness icon can be easily changed using the mouse and the scroll wheel. You can also use the arrow keys and enter to select the icon, but it's not quicker unless you're skilled at tapping the arrow keys a precise number of times.

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