Adjust screen brightness directly from taskbar in Windows 8?

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.

user541686

Posted 2013-02-18T18:05:45.153

Reputation: 21 330

1There is a brightness slider in Windows 8's settings charm. – gronostaj – 2014-08-08T12:24:26.140

Answers

iBrightness might be what you're looking for:
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...
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
```

Karan

Posted 2013-02-18T18:05:45.153

Reputation: 51 857

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 – 2015-05-01T13:58:19.427

+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 – 2013-02-18T19:24:28.787

Is iBrightnessTray a trojan horse? https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/8297251426afa535f2ee547e26c902e939c5ce550503abe943b62c4e3dce0419/analysis/

– user541686 – 2013-02-22T00:26:28.477

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 – 2013-02-22T00:31:25.257

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 – 2013-02-22T00:42:53.177

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

Amir Soofi

Posted 2013-02-18T18:05:45.153

Reputation: 131

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.

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

Press Win+X(for Windows 7 and Vista)
Press Win+R and run %SystemRoot%\System32\mblctr.exe
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.

crazypotato

Posted 2013-02-18T18:05:45.153

Reputation: 678

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. – Martin Hansen – 2014-08-14T20:03:48.097

can you confirm Win+X shortcut run Mobility Center on laptop? Cause on my Desktop PC this shortcut dont work. – crazypotato – 2014-08-15T04:41:16.940

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. – Martin Hansen – 2014-08-15T06:10:14.940

Check out PangoBright

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"}

jaggedsoft

Posted 2013-02-18T18:05:45.153

Reputation: 101

@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.

Graham

Posted 2013-02-18T18:05:45.153

Reputation: 194