Twinkle Tray enables brightness control on external displays in Windows 10 & 11. Even th Windows is capable of adjusting the backlight on most monitors, it doesn't support external monitors natively.
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Lunar Alternatives
Lunar is described as 'Intelligent adaptive brightness for your external display' and is an app in the system & hardware category. There are more than 10 alternatives to Lunar for a variety of platforms, including Mac, Windows, Linux, openSUSE and Python apps. The best Lunar alternative is Twinkle Tray, which is both free and Open Source. Other great apps like Lunar are Dimly, Crisp - Monitor Control, MonitorControl and Monitorian.
Alternatives list
32 Twinkle Tray alternatives
15 Dimly alternativesOpen-source macOS menu utility for unified brightness, blackout, and sleep control of external monitors, using hybrid DDC/CI and software overlays, per-display settings, custom profiles, hotkeys, panic shortcut, privacy by design, and secure signed builds.
5 Crisp - Monitor Control alternativesOpen-source macOS menu bar app enabling HiDPI scaling on external monitors, DDC brightness with software dimming, icon-based display presets, virtual displays, drag-to-arrange multi-monitor layouts, ICC profile switching, auto-brightness sync, and quick access toggles for display modes.
Cost / License
- Free
- Open Source (MIT)
Platforms
- Mac
Cost / License
- Free
- Open Source (MIT)
Platforms
- Mac
+2
27 Monitorian alternativesMonitorian is a Windows desktop tool to adjust the brightness of multiple monitors with ease.
XDR brightness boost app for Mac — push your display to 1600 nits using native EDR overlay, with color accuracy preserved and better battery efficiency.
Cost / License
- Paid
- Proprietary
Platforms
- Mac
+1
- 15 ddcutil alternatives
Most monitors, other than laptop displays, have a Virtual Control Panel (VCP), which implements features defined in the Montor Control Command Set (MCCS). Typically, ddcutil communicates with the monitor's VCP over an I2C bus, as per the Display Data Channel/Command...
Cost / License
- Free
- Open Source (GPL-2.0)
Platforms
- Linux
D 
BrightIntosh is lightweight, works system-wide, has optional launch-at-login functionality and includes a global hotkey to toggle the extra brightness.
21 DisplayBuddy alternativesDisplayBuddy lets you control external displays connected to your Mac right from your menu bar! No need to touch your clunky monitor buttons!
+4
DDCcontrol is software for controlling monitor parameters such as brightness, contrast, and RGB color levels. It includes a command-line tool and a GUI tool.
Cost / License
- Free
- Open Source (GPL-2.0)
Platforms
- Linux
- openSUSE
- Fedora
- Ubuntu
- Debian
The app lets you control the brightness of all your screens (both laptop and desktop) by a single click on a tray icon. Its look goes nicely with the system icons and it supports both light and dark mode.
Cost / License
- Free
- Open Source (MIT)
Platforms
- Windows
25 BetterDisplay alternativesUnlock your displays on your Mac! Smooth scaling, HiDPI unlock, XDR/HDR extra brightness upscale, DDC, brightness and dimming, virtual screens, PIP and lots more!.
Cost / License
- Freemium
- Proprietary
Platforms
- Mac
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EU
Norway
Japan
Czechia
Finland
