For Mac · Built-in and external displays

Every screen.
One dial.

DisplayDial is the only Mac app that gives every display a real hardware brightness valve, dims below the floor with a hard anti-lockout limit engineered in, and tapers toward bedtime like a sunset. One command center instead of three separate apps.

Join the waitlist See how it compares
FinderFileEdit9:41
100% · 6500K

Drag it. This is the live idea: brightness and warmth on one dial, per display, with a hard 5% floor so it can never go black. Notice you can't reach 0.

$150 to $2,000the hidden time cost of stitching 2 to 4 tools into what DisplayDial does natively, re-paid at every dock swap and macOS update
3 apps → 1hardware valve + overlay dimmer + bedtime curve, unified in one command center
5% floorthe anti-lockout limit engineered into every dimming path, so a screen is never accidentally unusable
32 tools studied15 competitors and 17 indie tools scanned; none ships more than 2 of the 4 pillars
The problem, in Mac users' own words

"My external monitor ignores my Mac's brightness keys entirely."

Plug in a second screen and F1/F2 stop working the moment they leave the built-in panel. The monitor sits blindingly bright at night or too dim during the day. So you stack MonitorControl for the hardware, f.lux for the warmth, and an overlay dimmer for a dark room, and the pieces fight each other for the same color table, forget their state after sleep, and break at every dock swap.

"How come I get no eye fatigue whatsoever from my MacBook, iPad, iPhone but whatever monitor I buy kills my eyes?"

Apple Support Communities · real thread

"External display always increases brightness after sleep even with 'apply last saved settings' enabled."

MonitorControl on GitHub · issues #850, #843

"F.lux resets the color table every few seconds," breaking other display apps trying to coexist with it.

BetterDisplay on GitHub · discussion #2508

These are real, sourced voices describing the category's pain. DisplayDial is pre-launch: no customer testimonials appear on this page because we do not have customers yet. We think that honesty is a feature too.

The command center

Real hardware brightness. Every display. One panel.

Not a gamma trick pretending to be brightness. DisplayDial drives the actual backlight of your built-in display and the actual luminance of every DDC-capable external monitor over USB-C, HDMI, or DisplayPort, each with its own independent slider.

The DisplayDial panel: today's curve, per-display hardware brightness sliders, modes, and the dimmer cover
  • A hardware valve per display. Built-in Retina and external monitors get independent, real brightness sliders, so the Dell's OSD buttons can finally retire.
  • A click-through dimmer cover on top. When the hardware floor is still too bright for a dark room, a translucent overlay dims further, and your cursor and clicks pass straight through it. Electron apps included.
  • Warmth on the same dial. A neutral or warm tint rides the same control, so "darker" and "gentler" are one motion, not two apps.
  • A reconnect safety net. A newly-connected monitor stuck dark from a previous session gets raised back to normal automatically. It only ever raises, never lowers.
  • Scriptable. The dim CLI ships with the app: status, set, presets, schedule. Everything the panel does, your scripts can do.
Shipping

Anti-lockout floor

A hard 5% limit is engineered into every dimming path, overlay and hardware alike. Every competitor category has documented black-screen complaints; DisplayDial makes "accidentally unusable" structurally impossible by design.

Shipping

Idle energy saver

Step away and the screen eases down to save power; touch anything and it snaps back instantly. Same anti-lockout floor, so idle never means invisible.

Shipping

Modes

Day, Evening, Reading, Movie, Focus, Away. One tap applies brightness and warmth together, holds for a while, then hands control back to the schedule.

Daily Dimmer · part of DisplayDial

Your screen should wind down when you do.

Night Shift flips a switch. f.lux warms the color and stops there. The Daily Dimmer is different: anchor it to your bedtime and it tapers brightness and warmth continuously toward it, the way an actual sunset works, then brings the morning back gently. No tool in this category, out of the 32 we studied, ships a bedtime-anchored curve.

Full until 7:30pm · dimmest at 11:00pm bedtime · full again by 7:30am drag the moon to move bedtime
12pm6pm12am6am 🌙

A melatonin-aware descent: the wind-down starts about 3.5 hours before your bedtime, settles at your chosen darkest point and warmth by bedtime, and brightens over 30 minutes after you wake. Every number is yours to tune.

  • Anchored to your bedtime, not to sunset in your timezone. Set 11:00pm and ember-calm arrives exactly then.
  • Brightness and warmth together. The curve carries both, down to a 1900K candle-warm at your darkest point.
  • Respects you. Adjust anything by hand and the schedule pauses, then quietly resumes. Pause it for 10 minutes or the whole night in one tap.
  • Morning ramp. A gentle 30-minute brighten after wake, so the first email of the day is not a floodlight.
DisplayDial Settings, Schedule tab: evening wind-down, darkest point at bedtime, and the morning ramp
The superset proof

Everything the category does, in one app. Plus what none of them do.

We studied 15 competitors and 17 indie tools. Here are the seven most capable, scored feature by feature. The others are single-purpose tools whose headline capability already appears as a row.

FeatureDisplayDialLunarMonitorControlBetterDisplayDimifyf.luxdesktop-dimmerNocturnal
Real hardware (DDC) brightness, built-in + external✓✓✓✓✕✕✕✕
Sub-minimum dimming below the hardware floor✓◐ Pro✕✓✓✕✓✓
Click-through dimming overlay✓✕✕✕◐✕◐◐
Bedtime-anchored brightness + warmth curve✓✕✕✕✕◐ color only✕◐
Anti-lockout floor (no accidental black screen)✓✕✕✕✕✕✕✕
Idle power-save dimming with a usable floor✓✕✕✕✕✕✕✕
Per-display state survives sleep / dock swap✓◐ reported broken◐ reported broken◐✕✕✓✕
One unified command center (all of the above)✓✕✕✕✕✕✕✕
Command-line control for scripting✓✓✕◐✕✕✕✕
Free tier✓✓✓ fully free✓ reduced✓✓ free✓✓
Simple, uncluttered default UI✓✕ "appallingly complex"✓✕✓✓✓✓
Coexists with Night Shift / f.lux color table✓✕ documented conflict◐◐◐n/a◐◐

Scored from each product's own documentation, GitHub issue trackers, and published reviews (July 2026). ◐ means partial or a documented reliability complaint. Full sourcing lives in our research dossier; every claim traces to a citation. Out of scope by choice: Wi-Fi control of Samsung/LG smart monitors (DisplayDial is scoped to built-in panels and DDC-capable monitors). XDR brightness boost and per-app presets are on the roadmap below.

Why trust the floor

Dimming you can't fall through.

Every tool in this category will happily take your screen darker. The complaints all live at the bottom: black-on-wake, stuck-dark monitors, "I had to restart the display to get it back." DisplayDial's answer is architectural: one choke point clamps every dimming path, overlay and hardware alike, to a 5% floor. Below that, the app will not go, no matter which slider, schedule, or script asked. And a reconnect safety net raises any monitor that arrives stuck dark from someone else's leftover state.

  • One clamp, every path. The schedule, the sliders, the CLI, and the idle dimmer all pass through the same floor.
  • Raise-only recovery. The reconnect net only ever raises a dark display back to normal; it never fights a level you chose.
  • Quit means normal. Quitting the app removes the overlay and hands your displays back exactly as macOS expects them.
Preview · on the roadmap

Where the command center goes next.

These are not shipped yet. They are the direction: one app that runs your whole desk's displays, not just their brightness. Waitlist members vote on what comes first.

Preview

Window snapping

Halves, thirds, corners, with per-display layouts. No brightness tool has it; no snapping tool does brightness. One command center should do both.

Preview

Display profiles

Dock at your desk and every monitor snaps to its saved brightness, warmth, and layout. Undock and the laptop takes over. No re-tuning.

Preview

Focus modes

Presentation mode pins everything bright and holds notifications-adjacent dimming; Movie mode darkens everything but the show.

Preview

XDR brightness boost

Push a supported built-in display past its standard cap for bright rooms, the way BrightIntosh and Vivid pioneered, folded into the same dial. Also our answer to HDR-mode dimming.

Preview

Per-app presets

Named apps can already hold the dimmer today; full per-app brightness profiles are the planned extension.

Preview

Smarter bedtime

The Daily Dimmer curve learning from your actual habits, beyond a fixed clock. Presence-aware ideas are on the bench.

Pricing plan

Free to control. Pro to wind down.

The DIY alternative costs $150 to $2,000 in stitching-and-re-tuning time, re-paid at every macOS update. DisplayDial will be a one-time purchase, priced at launch in the range of this category's one-time tools, with a real free tier and no subscription.

Free

$0
forever · no login · no nag
  • Hardware brightness for built-in + external displays
  • Basic schedule
  • Anti-lockout floor, always on

Pro

One-time
price announced at launch · waitlist members get the founding price
  • Daily Dimmer bedtime curve
  • Click-through overlay automation + modes
  • Per-display profiles, idle energy saver, CLI
Questions people actually ask

FAQ

Does this work with my external monitor's brightness keys?
Yes, that is the founding reason it exists. DisplayDial drives real hardware luminance on DDC-capable external monitors (most monitors over USB-C, HDMI, or DisplayPort) and the real backlight of your built-in display. Each display gets its own slider, and keyboard-shortcut control is on the near roadmap.
What's the difference between this and Lunar or MonitorControl?
Those are strong hardware-brightness tools, and the comparison table above scores them honestly. The short version: they stop at brightness. DisplayDial unifies the hardware valve with a click-through overlay for below-the-floor dimming, a bedtime-anchored brightness + warmth curve, an anti-lockout floor, and an idle energy saver, in one app. No tool we studied ships more than two of those four pillars.
Can my screen get stuck completely black if I dim it too much?
No. A hard 5% floor is engineered into every dimming path (sliders, schedule, scripts, idle dimming, all of it). Below 5% the app will not go. And if a monitor connects already stuck dark from other software's leftover state, a reconnect safety net raises it back to normal automatically.
Will this hurt my monitor if it changes brightness automatically all day?
The scheduled evening dimming runs through a software overlay, so it writes nothing to your monitor's hardware. Hardware (DDC) writes happen when you move a slider yourself, and they are rate-limited and debounced by design. This is a deliberate answer to the EEPROM-wear concern raised about always-writing auto-brightness tools.
How does the bedtime dimming actually work?
You set a bedtime. Starting about 3.5 hours before it (tunable), brightness and warmth taper along a melatonin-aware curve: full daylight, then a gradual descent to your chosen darkest point (13% and 1900K by default) exactly at bedtime. After your wake time it brightens back over 30 minutes. Touch anything by hand and it pauses, then quietly resumes.
Is there a free version?
There will be, and it is real: hardware brightness control for every display, a basic schedule, and the anti-lockout floor, free forever, no login, no nag. The Daily Dimmer curve, overlay automation, modes, and profiles are what Pro is for.
When can I get it?
DisplayDial is in private use today (the screenshots on this page are the real app) and the public build is being prepared. The waitlist is the fastest path: members get the first builds and the founding price.
The bottom line

One app. Every display. A screen that
respects your evenings.

A comparable setup costs $150 to $2,000 in time stitching together three apps that still fight each other. DisplayDial is one command center, designed so a dock swap never wipes your setup and a bedtime never ends in a black screen. Join the waitlist for the first public build and the founding price.

You're on the list. First builds and the founding price will land in your inbox.

That email didn't look right. Mind trying again?

Your email is used for DisplayDial launch news only. No cookies, no trackers, no PII analytics on this site; anonymous, aggregate event counts only.