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

lunar.fyi

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

#21

Post by NegativeLatency »

harikb wrote: post #12
snowwrestler wrote: post #8

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.

Is this a particular brand of external monitor? Lunar works for me, but my external monitor is not integrated with touchbar!

I think it's a little bit like CEC where there isn't just one standard and some implementations have weird quirks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_Data_Channel

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

#22

Post by BillinghamJ »

wanghq wrote: post #13

Got a MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019) weeks ago and bought a LG monitor ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07YGZ7C1K ). The brightness setting bothered me for 2 weeks as neither the Mac OSX nor LG's onscreen control software can set the brightness for the external monitor. The external monitor brightness changes every time I open/close the macbook lid. Thanks to both ddcctl and MonitorControl, I can finally set a fixed…

The LG UltraFine displays do support this (in fact there's no OSD/controls on the physical things at all) so it definitely is possible and something LG can do

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

#23

Post by jasim »

Alongwith ddctrl (https://github.com/kfix/ddcctl), these aliases serve all my external monitor brightness needs:

    alias verydull="~/Software/ddcctl/ddcctl -d 1 -b 3 -c 15"
    alias dull="~/Software/ddcctl/ddcctl -d 1 -b 6 -c 35"
    alias decent="~/Software/ddcctl/ddcctl -d 1 -b 10 -c 40"
    alias medium="~/Software/ddcctl/ddcctl -d 1 -b 25 -c 50"
    alias bright="~/Software/ddcctl/ddcctl -d 1 -b 30 -c 50"
    alias morebright="~/Software/ddcctl/ddcctl -d 1 -b 35 -c 60"
    alias superbright="~/Software/ddcctl/ddcctl -d 1 -b 100 -c 80"

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

#24

Post by blacksmith_tb »

gardaani wrote: post #5

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. https://github.com/kfix/ddcctl

Second that, I have it bound to a couple of fn keys via Karabiner to turn my old Dell monitor to its dimmest and brightest settings.

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

#25

Post by car »

I've been using this every day for a couple of months. My monitors are a Dell P2715Q and LG 32UD59-B.

The only issue was with the "Read external monitor brightness periodically" preference, which froze the system. But there is a fair warning.

If you feel like supporting the author, here is his Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/alinpanaitiu

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

#26

Post by willseth »

BillinghamJ wrote: post #22
wanghq wrote: post #13

Got a MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2019) weeks ago and bought a LG monitor ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07YGZ7C1K ). The brightness setting bothered me for 2 weeks as neither the Mac OSX nor LG's onscreen control software can set the brightness for the external monitor. The external monitor brightness changes every time I open/close the macbook lid. Thanks to both ddcctl and MonitorControl, I can finally set a fixed…

The LG UltraFine displays do support this (in fact there's no OSD/controls on the physical things at all) so it definitely is possible and something LG can do

Automatic dimming only works in the recently refreshed (mid 2019) UltraFines. It doesn't work in the original models sold from 2016-2019, despite advertising and product documentation claims that it does.

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

#27

Post by leokennis »

herf wrote: post #17

There is a problem with "cheap" monitors and DDC/CI: some of them use EEPROMs to store brightness settings, and this limits you to about 100,000 writes. Worrying about this is the main reason we don't ship DDC/CI with f.lux. (I know that some more modern monitors use NAND and don't have limitations like this.) Anyone know if these fears are overblown?

Wait...so after the 100.000th write, your monitor will be forever stuck on the brightness it was set to that time?

BTW, assuming I change brightness 20 times per day, that would still give me 5000 days ≈ 13,5 years of service. By that time I definitely hope to use a different monitor than today

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

#28

Post by arghwhat »

herf wrote: post #17

There is a problem with "cheap" monitors and DDC/CI: some of them use EEPROMs to store brightness settings, and this limits you to about 100,000 writes. Worrying about this is the main reason we don't ship DDC/CI with f.lux. (I know that some more modern monitors use NAND and don't have limitations like this.) Anyone know if these fears are overblown?

I suppose it's a type of problem that solves itself: If companies are dumb enough to store brightness settings in EEPROM, they're only doing it because no one uses DDC/CI.

Use DDC/CI, and they'll stop. Even NAND is wrong if brightness is actually dynamically controlled, it should just be RAM.

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

#29

Post by arghwhat »

leokennis wrote: post #27
herf wrote: post #17

There is a problem with "cheap" monitors and DDC/CI: some of them use EEPROMs to store brightness settings, and this limits you to about 100,000 writes. Worrying about this is the main reason we don't ship DDC/CI with f.lux. (I know that some more modern monitors use NAND and don't have limitations like this.) Anyone know if these fears are overblown?

Wait...so after the 100.000th write, your monitor will be forever stuck on the brightness it was set to that time? BTW, assuming I change brightness 20 times per day, that would still give me 5000 days ≈ 13,5 years of service. By that time I definitely hope to use a different monitor than today

No, after 100.000th write your monitor is toast because the EEPROM died. Also note that most people change brightness in increments, with each step causing a write.
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