Ability to adjust your laptop’s display brightness can make looking at the screen more comfortable and less eye-straining. Also, reducing the brightness can increase the battery life of a notebook. In this post we will explain how you can change the display brightness on a Windows 10-based laptop.
You can do it using the Windows Action Center, Display section in Windows Settings, Windows Mobility Center, or via brightness hotkeys on your notebook’s keyboard.
Change Display Brightness Using Windows Action Center
To open the Windows Action Center pane, click on the speech balloon-like icon on the taskbar, in the extreme lower right corner of the screen. Or, press the Windows key + A key on the notebook keyboard simultaneously. One of the rectangular tiles in the Action Center has a sun-like icon on it. That’s the brightness adjustment tile / button. Click on it one or several times to adjust the brightness at your desired level (0, 25, 50, 75, or 100 percent).
Note: If the brightness tile is not visible on the Action Center pane, click on the Expand button located above the tiles which are visible.
Adjust Brightness in Display Section of Windows Settings
If you want to fine-tune the brightness instead of using 25% increments, right-click on the same brightness tile in the Action Center, click on the Go to Settings button and adjust brightness using the slider on the Display settings section that will show up (Windows Settings / System / Display). You can also reach the same section and slider by typing brightness (or display) in the Windows Search box in the lower left corner of the screen and then clicking on the relevant search result. Or, you can open Windows Settings (Windows key + I key on the keyboard) and click on the System item.
Adjust Brightness Using Windows Mobility Center
The same brightness level settings function can be found in the old Windows Mobility Center. Right-click on the battery icon on the taskbar, in the lower left corner of the screen, and click on the Windows Mobility Center. There you can find an old-school Windows 7-style brightness intensity slider.
Increase / Decrease Screen Brightness Using Keyboard Hotkeys
The most of modern laptops feature a pair of keyboard keys for increasing and decreasing screen brightness. These “hotkeys” are usually in the top row of the keyboard, on the traditional function keys (F1, F2, F3…). They are marked with sun-like signs. Depending on the keyboard settings, using the brightness hotkeys may require pressing the keyboard’s FN function button and brightness + or – keys simultaneously. Every time you hit a brightness hotkey, a slider will pop up in the upper left corner of the screen to show you percentage of the current brightness level. You can also adjust the brightness using the mouse pointer and the same slider.
Notes Related to Windows 10 Brightness Settings
It’s worth noting that screen brightness levels of a Windows 10 laptop on battery and on AC power are separate, although they use the same brightness tile in the Action Center and brightness sliders in the Display settings and Windows Mobility Center. For instance, you can set the brightness level to 75% when the notebook runs on AC power and 50% percent when it uses the battery (so you can save the battery life). To do so, just set the tile / slider to 75% while the laptop is plugged in the power outlet and to 50% while it’s plugged out. Windows 10 will remember your choices automatically.
Some notebook models have ambient light sensors, which are used to measure ambient lighting and adjust the screen brightness to an optimal level according to intensity of the ambient light. You can enable and disable this feature on compatible laptops with Windows 10 in the same Display settings section mentioned above. You just need to toggle the “Adjust my screen brightness automatically” switch on or off.