Previously we’ve talked about how you can manually turn off a notebook or laptop LCD screen using a utility called Turn Off LCD. Today we will share with you another tip on how to dim or brighten the LCD screen. I can easily brighten my Acer laptop’s screen by pressing the Fn + Left key simultaneously to brighten it or Fn + Right key to dim it. The combination keys are different for each notebook. Some are Fn + F7 to turn it down, and Fn + F8 to turn it up.
You should be able to see which keys are used by looking at them, and looking for which ones have a symbol for brightness, quite often in light blue. If you can’t seem to find it, just check your notebook’s manual for whether there is a shortcut key for this purpose. But most of the ones I’ve seen are either Fn keys, number keys or special keys such as the arrow keys etc..
A laptop LCD screen is not like a desktop LCD monitor where there are buttons for you to adjust the brightness, contrast, colors etc… So if your laptop doesn’t have the combination key that can be used to adjust the brightness of the LCD screen, or if you have a key combination that doesn’t seem to work because of a broken FN key that cannot be remapped, then you’re pretty much stuck with either too dim or too bright a screen.
But not to worry because here are a couple of solutions for how to easily adjust the brightness of your LCD screen.
DimScreen is part of Skrommel’s 1 hour software hosted at DonationCoder. It is small, easy to use and serves its purpose, that is to dim the whole screen.
DimScreen is portable and only 400KB in size. While it is running, it only takes up 1.6 MB memory. To change the brightness, you can right click on the tray icon and select the percentage of dimming. If you go to the settings, you can configure a hotkey to easily increase or decrease the dimming.
There’s only 1 problem with this tool that is it when you are playing video on your computer. The video would only show black screen. However, I tried dimming the screen with DimScreen and played Counter Strike but with no effect at all. DimScreen has been made with the AutoHotKey scripting language.
Volumouse is a utility developed by NirSoft and can be used to adjust the screen brightness. It was originally developed for controlling the system’s sound volume via the mouse wheel, but as time has gone along, a lot of other features have been added to it. Volumouse is only about 100KB, much smaller than DimScreen and can do much more.
To use Volumouse to control the screen brightness, you’ll need to set up a rule for it by selecting a qualifier key from the first dropdown box and the choosing “Screen Brightness” from the Component dropdown. The image below is for when I press and hold the Ctrl key and scroll down the mouse wheel, the screen will dim. And when I press and hold the Ctrl key and scroll up the mouse wheel, the screen will get brighter.
Volumouse also has an option for an on screen display or percentage meter in addition to making the rule specific to certain programs.
Obviously if you want to use Volumouse on a laptop, it will depend on whether you have a mouse connected or your touch pad has a scrolling option.
If you want to permanently make you screen brighter or dimmer, it’s also worth checking the graphics adapter driver settings because there’s often an option to change the display’s color, brightness, gamma levels, RGB etc.
yo! man love u
you rock
\m/
Thank you sooooo much!!! Couldn’t figure out for the life of me how to brighten my screen
thank u sir thank u sir u r fix my prob thankx and u save my eyes
its all information realy use full new user plus all computer user
thanks dear……………
thanks so much, you fixed my problem!!
Thank you very much my dear friend…GOD BLESS YOU ALWAYS!!
Thank you very much Iv’e been trying to figure it out forever. i have an gateway and mine is Fn+ F11 to darken and Fn+F12 to brighten
THANKYOU!!!! my daughter got ahold of my laptop again and the screen was very dim. I was thinking I would have to by another inverter and was a bit… well anyways, I thought lets see what you think first and woohooo brightness! oh on my dell its fn and the up and down arrows!!
I really like this program I have problems with bright lights,only thing I cannot figure out is after every restart I have to re-install the program
Thanks so much for the info on dimming my screen. I have an HP notebook and had no idea those function keys were there. Will have to explore what the others do. Your help is very much appreciated.
This was very helpful! Totally forgot about the Fn key! Thanks a bunch, this was the only website that actually helped me.
just wanted to say Thanks Ray
Thank you my headache will leave now. What do all the other little ‘blue’ keys do? lol I suspect it has to do with the Fn key so I will find out. TY again.
Volumouse 64-bit version worked great on my HP notebook. It dimmed both the notebook’s screen and my external monitor at the same time. I have a third monitor attached by a USB Graphics Adapter and that was not dimmed by Volumouse, so I have to do that manually using that monitor’s own controls, but I really would have been surprised if Volumouse had done that one, too. So, overall, I’m very pleased and for a free utility this is very nice. It does have one slightly annoying feature, which is that you have to view the configuration display in order to use the mouse wheel – you can’t just use the mouse any time you like to dim the display – you have to 1) bring up the program, including its configuration display, and then 2) use the mouse wheel to dim the display. But there is a convenient tray icon for bringing it up, so this is a minor complaint.
what a relief for my eyes! Thanks .
thanks – just the solution I was looking for
does this make the battery last longer?
Oh my Goodness–thank you for this info!! My eyes feel better already!!
informasi yang saya cari-cari….
Terimakasih Sob, aku dah pusing kirain laptop ku rusak lcd nya karena tadi pagi barusan jatuh dan layarnya jadi redup
This is how web information should be presented. No BS just answers. Thanks
Wow. Thank you! I was about to order a new bulb/inverter and a headache to fix the dimness of the screen!
Ten seconds on your page and I had the fix.
Thank you!
I have one question about this screen-dimming software… Do this programs can also provide power-saving function by dimming the screen?
Great help. Thanks so much for the tip. I downloaded the DimScreen and used it on my laptop. And what a relief for my eyes! Thanks again.
Thank bgt mas….driver saya ga support sama win 7 jadi tombol hotkey buat brightness displaynya ga berfungsi..untuk ada soft ini cepat dan langsung kerja…
nice, i use it as my screen is led and it is extremely bright, it irritates my eyes when i am using my laptop in a dark place i tried dimming it using the control pannel but it is still too bright. tks nice software
Does anybody know how to un-install the dimscreen.exe?
It seems to be only on desktop but unremovable.
Aaaah you’re king! I’ve got a Dell Studio laptop which pulls a lot of juice by itself, but the minimum screen brightness is still way too high for working in dark places. With this tool, I can get it down much lower, almost doubling my accu time! Thanks!
Thanks so much for the tip! I must have accidently hit ‘Fn’ + F5 at some point. I was beginning to become distressed at how dim my screen had become. A google seearch on ‘dim laptop screen’ brought you right up, and the suggestion regarding the Sony laptop then worked like magic. I can see clearly now! Thanks!
bonjour
j’ai la touche Fn qui marche plus
j’ai utiliser DIMSCREER
mais il n’augumente pas la luminosité il l’a diminue seulement
alors que moi j sui deja au niveau bas
donc ya_t_il un logiciel qui permet d’augumenter la luminosité???????????
Works like a charm. I was successfully able to reduce the brightness of my Fujitsu laptop. Way below than it minimum brightness level. Great software and wonderful suggestion.
@Manda: yes. I have a Sony laptop (Win7) where both Dimscreen and Volumouse work fine for screen dimming. But I also have an older Toshiba laptop (XP-SP3) where the dimming function of Volumouse doesn’t work at all (apparently a non-supported graphics card) and where Dimscreen does work, but causes a serious slowdown in graphics rendering – you see any new windows slowly rolling out on the screen, instead of popping up as usual. My guess is Dimscreen does somehow use a lot of extra video memory, so much that it slows down screen rendering with older video cards. I keep looking out for a better solution!
dzieki za pomoc :)
While the program worked, it made everything run really really slow…
Anyone else have this problem?
thx atas tipsnya ya….
Merci mille fois pour cette solution!!… mon écran de portable était si terne, je n’en pouvais plus!!… merci, merci, vraiment!!
oh my goodness it realy worked. now my eyes can stop hurting so much. thank u verymuch for the tip
oh my goodness, it realy worked. wow now my eyes can stop hurting so much.
thank u very much for the tip. very helpful. thank you.
perfect fix: easy, fast, and works!
Raymond,
Can you tell me the command you used in AHK to change screen brightness so I can add it to my existing hotkeys script? Thanks!
Anybody know a program/app that dims automatically the LCD backlighting on the screen when you plug-in/out your notebook from the AC?
I have Dachshund Battery doubler but it is not configurable and it dims it just to 75%. I need it to dim at 20-25%.
Thanks much. The NVIDIA settings on my Toshiba could notnget the brightness to asn low as I would like it.
YAYY
I can’t thank you enough!
I’ve been attempting to find this with no avail
THANK YOU
i am very much happy that upon reading your very informative tip on how to brighten my lap top screen thank you very much i hope i can ask again your line for another brilliant info.
thanks a lot
from
Philippines !!!!!!!
Thank you soooo much, Ive been sitting here for days trying to see with a too dark screen… thought it was time for glasses
Wow,really works,thank a lot..
how do you change the colour white on my widows mail and skype as it it too bright for my eyes i want to change it to a light grey or cream
awesome thanks!!!
Lovely tip indeed, thanks. My cat slept on my computer and must have pressed the keys to dim with her paws. Now I can see again.
:)
I adjusted the brightness of my screen, thinking that was what was hurting my eyes but they still burn when I look at the screen.
Thanks for your help. You have just help to resolve my laptop’s brightness problem. especially for the volumouse software. very helpful!!!!!!!!!
Thanks for the info… I have been searching it for awhile :)
Notebooks: Lighter, more power efficient though not as power full, meant to act as a mobile notebook
Laptops: More power consumption, more power, meant to replace a desktop.
sometimes they do not know that Fn key is..and ignore the button… hard to tell somebody that too Orthodox with computer
haha thats a VERY GOOD question jorgeL :P i use both terms ALOT and i have almost no idea.. i\’m guessing it has something to do with size/weight and looks.. the sleeker and smaller ones are notebooks.. :P
:$ What is the difference between laptop and notebook?
No AhTim, from the looks of it, it looked like there a layer of darker color was added to the screen which makes it look dimmer.
Nice Tip, thanks
Is it use the same logic as physical Fn+Arrow key that can save some power consumption?