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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

#61

Post by powersnail »

jasim wrote: post #23

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="~/So…

For Linux, use ddcutil.

I wrote a GUI slider that wraps around the command line, so I don't have to type the numbers each time.

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

#62

Post by byproxy »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #39
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?

You never know if a wear leveling algorithm has been implemented so flash type isn't going to make lifetime determinable. Even without, 100 erases a day will last for 3 years or longer.

I've been using my current monitor for ~10 years.

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

#63

Post by alin23 »

myowz wrote: post #59
alin23 wrote: post #31

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.

Quick feedback: I tried it for the first time, thinking to myself 'wow I really want to turn down the brightness on this darn monitor...its been bothering me for too long' and I didn't find the UX very easy to perform that immediate task. In fact, I have to say, just from quickly downloading this and trying to use it, I don't totally understand what it does...but I did figure out how to manually drop the settings to…

Hey thanks for the feedback! I know the UI is a bit too complex at the moment. It's hard to strike a balance between simplicity and configurability. It's still a work in progress.

So what does this do:

Lunar allows you to change the hardware brightness and contrast of the monitor (the one that can be controlled with the hardware buttons on the monitor)

If you simply want to turn down the brightness from time to time, you can set Lunar in Manual mode and use the brightness keys on your keyboard to adjust the monitor brightness.

Where Lunar shines is with a MacBook or iMac where there is an ambient light sensor integrated in the device that adapts the builtin display brightness. In Sync mode Lunar can sync that already adapted brightness to your external monitor so you don't have to worry about the brightness throughout the day.

There's also a Location mode if you want the brightness to adjust automatically based on the sun position in your location.

All this can be controlled through hotkeys which are visible in both the menu bar icon menu and the Hotkeys configuration page reachable by pressing the left arrow key 2 times in the Lunar UI.

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

#64

Post by bshep »

jasim wrote: post #23

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="~/So…

I made an app to wrap around ddcctl that works on osx, it works fine for my own uses and if anyone want to improve it feels free.

https://github.com/bshep/ASUS-DDC-Volume

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

#65

Post by atombender »

Off topic but tangentially related: Is there a brightness tool for the iPhone that has a better colour profile that harmonizes "dark mode" and "light mode"?

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'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'd be better to weight the brightness logarithmically: Colours close to the dark should stay the same at both 20% and 100% brightness.

I'm not sure if this is even possible on an iPhone. I don't have the same problem on my external Dell screen with my Mac, not sure why.

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

#66

Post by bgentry »

alin23 wrote: post #31

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.

Hi there, I couldn't find a way to disable built-in logging & analytics to log.lunar.fyi. Is there a setting to disable any network requests other than for software updates? Thanks!

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

#67

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#68

Post by [deleted] »

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?

[deleted]

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

#70

Post by _abox »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #51
taeric wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a way to know how my monitor does this?

I've been reading that NAND flash doesn't support erasing individual bytes, while EEPROM does. If there's some way to attempt this and know the outcome, maybe that's a way to figure it out.

The problem is that eeproms don't do wear leveling. Not internally and they're usually controlled by a simpler microcontroller that doesn't have enough resources to do it in software.

So every time you write to three same byte you're writing the same cell. 100.000 cycles is actually much more than current flash generations.

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