Want to dim all screen contents

[nathan323]

Hi all.

I want a keyboard shortcut to dim the screen, in case I want to turn my monitor on in the middle of the night to check something. I don't want to have to lower my monitors brightness each night before I go to bed in the off chance that I might need to turn it on during night.

I have tried progs LeDimmer, Clutter Cloak, Dropcloth and f.lux. They all dim everything except the active window, which is not useful for my situation. Was hoping there was a system setting I could change with a batch file (for which I could create a keyboard shortcut)..

[ShadowThief]

f.lux totally dims the active window...

Now I'm not sure what you're asking for.

[nathan323]

Ok yeah sorry correction.
f.lux dims everything, but 1. I am not sure that the max dimness it provides will be enough, and 2. it takes 20 seconds to slowly dim to that level. That'll be a lifetime in the middle of the night haha.

Are there any solutions that don't require 3rd-party software?

[foxidrive]

Set the monitor to enter sleep mode after 10 minutes - pressing spacebar will wake it to full brightness in several seconds.

[nathan323]

So you're saying then I'll have that several seconds to work with until its too bright?

[foxidrive]

So you're saying then I'll have that several seconds to work with until its too bright?

Running f.lux will dim the screen during all night time hours.
I believe that it should function from sleep mode also, but you can test that.

It has a right click option to expand the colour modes to include candle and ember mode, which should be quite dim.