Really dim down an external display

Jun 13, '08 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: raboox8

I recently got a Dell 20" LCD to act as an external monitor for my MacBook through its Mini DVI-to-DVI connector. When working at night with only a small lamp for illumination, it was impossible to set the brightness low enough so that I wouldn't have to squint at the screen.

Inverting colors using Control-Option-Command-8 made it just slightly more comfortable, but I didn't fancy the weird colors. Calibrating the screen to a lower gamma didn't do much either. In the end, I found these two freeware utilities:

Both act by applying a color filter to make the screen look darker. I like Nocturne because it activates/deactivates darkening with a single click. I assigned a trigger to Nocturne in Quicksilver, and now I can get a dimmed screen with just a keypress ... and no more bloodshot eyes!

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