Lunar – macOS utility to set brightness and volume on external monitors

Creator of Lunar here. Thank you all for the kind comments and generous donations and many thanks to the OP for posting this! Let me know if you have any questions or quick feedback about Lunar.

There is a problem with &quot;cheap&quot; monitors and DDC&#x2F;CI: some of them use EEPROMs to store brightness settings, and this limits you to about 100,000 writes.<p>Worrying about this is the main reason we don&#x27;t ship DDC&#x2F;CI with f.lux. (I know that some more modern monitors use NAND and don&#x27;t have limitations like this.) Anyone know if these fears are overblown?

Also note that MonitorControl [1] might be a good complement to this program - it allows manual setting of brightness and contrast, but also adds volume control.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;MonitorControl&#x2F;MonitorControl" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;MonitorControl&#x2F;MonitorControl</a>

Alongwith ddctrl (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;kfix&#x2F;ddcctl" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;kfix&#x2F;ddcctl</a>), these aliases serve all my external monitor brightness needs:<p><pre><code> alias verydull=&quot;~&#x2F;Software&#x2F;ddcctl&#x2F;ddcctl -d 1 -b 3 -c 15&quot; alias dull=&quot;~&#x2F;Software&#x2F;ddcctl&#x2F;ddcctl -d 1 -b 6 -c 35&quot; alias decent=&quot;~&#x2F;Software&#x2F;ddcctl&#x2F;ddcctl -d 1 -b 10 -c 40&quot; alias medium=&quot;~&#x2F;Software&#x2F;ddcctl&#x2F;ddcctl -d 1 -b 25 -c 50&quot; alias bright=&quot;~&#x2F;Software&#x2F;ddcctl&#x2F;ddcctl -d 1 -b 30 -c 50&quot; alias morebright=&quot;~&#x2F;Software&#x2F;ddcctl&#x2F;ddcctl -d 1 -b 35 -c 60&quot; alias superbright=&quot;~&#x2F;Software&#x2F;ddcctl&#x2F;ddcctl -d 1 -b 100 -c 80&quot;</code></pre>

Got a MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019) weeks ago and bought a LG monitor (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;gp&#x2F;product&#x2F;B07YGZ7C1K" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;gp&#x2F;product&#x2F;B07YGZ7C1K</a>). The brightness setting bothered me for 2 weeks as neither the Mac OSX nor LG&#x27;s onscreen control software can set the brightness for the external monitor. The external monitor brightness changes every time I open&#x2F;close the macbook lid. Thanks to both ddcctl and MonitorControl, I can finally set a fixed brightness. Wondering why big corps fail to provide the basic features while some open source software can do?

This is a great example of why I like the Touch Bar on my Macbook Pro. When it is connected to an external monitor, I tap the brightness icon in the Touch Bar and get two sliders: one to control brightness on my laptop, and one to control brightness on my external monitor. This seems to be a native feature; I did not install anything to do it.

I have been using this command line tool to control my external monitor from my Mac. I created few Automator scripts calling it to make the monitor either dimmed or bright.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;kfix&#x2F;ddcctl" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;kfix&#x2F;ddcctl</a>

I&#x27;ve been using ExternalDisplayBrightness for this:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nesveda.com&#x2F;projects&#x2F;ExternalDisplayBrightness&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nesveda.com&#x2F;projects&#x2F;ExternalDisplayBrightness&#x2F;</a><p>With my LG 32UL950-W, I&#x27;ve found that whether it responds depends on the cable choice. I had to give up on Thunderbolt because the monitor itself kept resetting; HDMI delivers a picture but doesn&#x27;t look as good, and doesn&#x27;t respond to ExternalDisplayBrightness. I&#x27;m now using a 10&#x27; USB-C to DisplayPort cable (too long for Thunderbolt) and everything works, including ExternalDisplayBrightness.<p>I&#x27;m curious to see if switching to Lunar would gain me anything.

The Windows equivalent would be Monitorian (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;emoacht&#x2F;Monitorian" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;emoacht&#x2F;Monitorian</a>). It doesn&#x27;t have the adaptive curve algorithm, but I&#x27;ve been using it for over a year and it&#x27;s indispensable.

Cool idea, but I&#x27;m a software developer and I cannot figure out how to use this app. Something as simple as monitor brightness doesn&#x27;t need so many controls, toggles, and things popping up and telling me things. It doesn&#x27;t follow a single MacOS design convention.

Off topic but tangentially related: Is there a brightness tool for the iPhone that has a better colour profile that harmonizes &quot;dark mode&quot; and &quot;light mode&quot;?<p>On my iPhone 11 late at night, turning the brightness down to 20% makes black text on white readable, but if I switch to a dark mode app, it&#x27;s not comfortable, so I have to turn the brightness up again. To me, that implies the brightness just linearly applies to the whole colour spectrum, when it&#x27;d be better to weight the brightness logarithmically: Colours close to the dark should stay the same at both 20% and 100% brightness.<p>I&#x27;m not sure if this is even possible on an iPhone. I don&#x27;t have the same problem on my external Dell screen with my Mac, not sure why.

I can&#x27;t believe this works on my 11yo Dell monitor connected via Thunderbolt&gt; Dock&gt; Displayport. Thank you!<p>I haven&#x27;t messed with the brightness in years because the OSD is so bad.<p>I would honestly base my next monitor purchase based on compatibility with this utility!

I didn&#x27;t expect my 5 year old Dell P2415Q to Just Work with Lunar, but it does, awesome! Now to stop messing with that awful OSD.

Frickin&#x27; brilliant, thank you! Worked with my LG display out of the box. Enjoy your coffee :D

Why is this needed in the first place? I was shocked when I could no longer control brightness after upgrading from my old 23&quot; Apple Cinema Display.

I&#x27;d settle for the Mac being smart enough to let me resize each external display to its actual physical size, so dragging between them works. Apparently, Apple thinks it&#x27;s perfectly OK to assume that <i>all</i> your displays have the same pixel density as your laptop screen - FAIL!

How does this compare to a blue light adjuster like the built in macOS one or f.lux [1]?<p>I think they would complement each other. Anyone tried both? (Lunar and f.lux)<p>* [1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;justgetflux.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;justgetflux.com&#x2F;</a>

Thanks for making this. Light years better than the original app I was using as it lets me change the volume stepper control, though the scroll&#x2F;swipe motions in settings are bit jarring to use.

Thank you for making this! I used to have to unplug my external monitors and use only my laptop screen at night because they used to be so bright. Always wanted something like this.

I&#x27;ve been using this every day for a couple of months. My monitors are a Dell P2715Q and LG 32UD59-B.<p>The only issue was with the &quot;Read external monitor brightness periodically&quot; preference, which froze the system. But there is a fair warning.<p>If you feel like supporting the author, here is his Patreon:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.patreon.com&#x2F;alinpanaitiu" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.patreon.com&#x2F;alinpanaitiu</a>

Been using MonitorControl for a while now, and it was great but this is far nicer in my opinion. Great work. The only downside is before I saw this discussion I was happily using MonitorControl and now I&#x27;m using Lunar scared to death that one day both of my expensive 4k monitors will just be bricked due to the whole DDC&#x2F;CI&#x2F;EEPROM 100,000 writes deal discussed by @herf

Neat! I just got a new screen with DDC&#x2F;CI and was excited to get that control with Dell Display Manager on my desktop rather than digging through OSD menus. I wish it would just go in the action center like a laptop&#x27;s built-in screen, but it&#x27;s still more convenient than using the buttons.<p>Will have to try this out when I get it hooked up to my Macbook!

What a nice little tool! I have two random no-name adapters at work for my two monitors. One is DisplayPort, and the other HDMI. I wasn&#x27;t expecting this to work, but sure enough, it does! Both monitors show up and promptly respond to my brightness settings.

Love the utility! Been using it for a few months now. I’m curious, but is it possible to have the tool change inputs as well? For example, to change from DisplayPort to hdmi, and back from a keystroke.

I&#x27;ve tried some of these a while ago. It locked up my entire system requiring a hard reset every time it tried to send a command to the monitor.

Don&#x27;t know if it&#x27;s specific to LG monitors but the brightness controls on my keyboard modify the screen of whichever window has focus.

I just tried Lunar out, it definitely makes the brightness on the external monitor higher than the Laptop monitor. How bright is too bright?

Neat. I have two external monitors which behave very differently though - please make the clipping setting per-monitor rather than global!

This is the only solution I&#x27;ve tried that works with the two identical monitors I use. Thanks for making it!

I was unable to figure out how to get this to work with an iMac as a secondary display :(<p>Looked wonderful though!

`brew cask install lunar` works, so into my MacOS init script (laptop.local) it goes!

Doesn&#x27;t work on 2014 Mac Mini running High sierra. Does nothing and goes away.

Has anyone been able to map volume control to their volume control knob?

All I want is that 50% idle timer that the laptops do.

Super cool OP! Well done! :)

This is pretty useful!

yes! the volume control is huge for me

Thanks &lt;3

volume control doesn&#x27;t work