Any recommendations for how to accomplish this in a window manager like qtile? I’ve got a solution hacked together using the settings available in picom but it only works on individual windows and averages brightness in a way that makes anything high contrast very hard to view.
If your monitor supports it, you can use ddcutil in the terminal to set monitor brightness. You need to install i2c tools and ddcutil, modprobe i2c-dev, then:
it should return something like Feature: 10 (brightness).
Then ddcutil getvcp 10
Should output the brightness range.
Then ddcutil setvcp 10$value
If you have multiple monitors you can use ddcutil detect and select it with -d.
Alternatively, I believe ddcontrol has a GTK UI.
There is also the ddcci kernel module should integrate external monitor brightness controls into native brightness controls used by laptops. So that might be easy if qtile has some form of laptop brightness control widget.
I’m curious if this is the same thing as controlling the monitor brightness using the on-screen display? If so, then no dice: I already keep them at the lowest possible setting at all times, and it’s still retina-destroying in low-light conditions. I’ll look into it further, though, and I’m not too bothered otherwise - I’ve got a manageable thing going on with picom, even if it’s hacky. Thanks for the info.
Any recommendations for how to accomplish this in a window manager like qtile? I’ve got a solution hacked together using the settings available in picom but it only works on individual windows and averages brightness in a way that makes anything high contrast very hard to view.
If your monitor supports it, you can use ddcutil in the terminal to set monitor brightness. You need to install i2c tools and ddcutil, modprobe i2c-dev, then:
sudo ddcutil capabilities | grep Brightness (or Luminosity)it should return something like Feature: 10 (brightness).
Then
ddcutil getvcp 10Should output the brightness range.
Then
ddcutil setvcp 10 $valueIf you have multiple monitors you can use
ddcutil detectand select it with -d.Alternatively, I believe ddcontrol has a GTK UI.
There is also the ddcci kernel module should integrate external monitor brightness controls into native brightness controls used by laptops. So that might be easy if qtile has some form of laptop brightness control widget.
Edit: vdu_controls looks pretty cool too.
I’m curious if this is the same thing as controlling the monitor brightness using the on-screen display? If so, then no dice: I already keep them at the lowest possible setting at all times, and it’s still retina-destroying in low-light conditions. I’ll look into it further, though, and I’m not too bothered otherwise - I’ve got a manageable thing going on with picom, even if it’s hacky. Thanks for the info.
Ah, no luck then. You’re correct, it’s software to change the monitors hardware settings that you usually access with the OSD.