External­Display­Brightness For Mac

You can connect an external display to pretty much any Mac, but non-Apple monitors can't normally take advantage of the handy brightness control hotkeys available on Apple keyboards. You have to resort to using the buttons on your monitor, which is less than ideal.

External­Display­Brightness is an interesting app that provides you with an alternative. It allows you to increase or decrease any external monitor's brightness using two customizable hotkeys, which function more-or-less like the standard brightness control keys on your keyboard.

Getting things up and running is remarkably straightforward. Essentially, you only have to open the app, select your preferred hotkeys if the default ones are not to your liking, and then close the Preferences window. Just make sure you don't quit the application, as it will stop working if you do.

However, there is one thing you need to remember. When you launch the app, the current display brightness will be set as the maximum. This means you will not be able to increase the monitor's brightness above this value using the configured hotkeys.

If you've set everything up properly, especially when it comes to the maximum brightness, the app should prove very helpful. However, it would be nice if it were able to take your brightness from 0 to 100 no matter what the level was when you launched the app.

To change your screen's brightness in smaller steps, you can hold down ⇧ and ⌥ while pressing the hotkeys, just like on a regular Apple display.

The app is also capable of increasing and decreasing the brightness of multiple connected monitors simultaneously. If you wish, this function can be disabled when the ⌘ key isn't held down.

With the exception of the maximum brightness issue we experienced, External­Display­Brightness was quite impressive. It is very easy to configure and offers support for multiple monitors. If your external display's brightness can't be controlled using the default brightness keys, this app is worth a try.