Credit: Hamlin Rozario / MakeUseOf

I had only used my laptop for work for the longest time, so a couple of years ago, when I switched to a multi-monitor setup for the first time, I faced a big surprise: Windows cannot control the brightness of external monitors. Yes, those little sliders you see in the Quick Settings panel and in the Settings app—the ones that make adjusting your laptop screen effortless—do absolutely nothing for an external display.

Now, brightness is one of those things you either set once and forget or adjust constantly depending on the room’s lighting, the time of day, and personal preference. For me, it was the latter, so I had to find a solution, and Twinkle Tray turned out to be perfect.

Twinkle Tray lets you manage brightness of all monitors from one place

One app to rule all my monitor settings

When I first couldn’t find the option to control the brightness of external monitors on Windows, I thought I was missing something. But that wasn’t the case. Fortunately, after testing a few different brightness control apps, I came across Twinkle Tray.

Twinkle Tray puts all your monitor controls right in the system tray. And of course, you can drag that icon to the taskbar for direct access. With this, adjusting brightness is effortless. You can control each monitor individually or, if you prefer, sync them so they all change together. That means whether you have two, three, or more displays, you can tweak them exactly how you like without fumbling with the physical buttons.

It’s not just brightness either. You can adjust contrast, volume, and even the power state from the same Twinkle Tray flyout. These extra features aren’t on by default, but enabling them is simple. For that, right-click the Twinkle Tray icon in the system tray, go to Settings, and navigate to DDC/CI Features. Once enabled, all controls appear in the flyout.

Twinkle Tray communicates with your monitors using DDC/CI and WMI, which means it works with a wide range of external displays. If you have multiple monitors, you can go to Monitor Settings in Twinkle Tray to rename them, reorder them, or even hide a monitor from the flyout. This makes managing a multi-monitor setup much simpler.

Twinkle Tray works well with most external monitors. That said, if you encounter issues or want to start fresh, go to the General tab in its settings and click Reset settings. This resets all the display settings changed by the app.

Automations make things even better

Automations that do the work while I focus on other things

Twinkle Tray goes beyond manual brightness control. It lets you schedule brightness changes throughout the day. For instance, your screens could be brighter in the morning and dimmer in the evening to reduce eye strain. To set this up, go to the Time Adjustments tab, click Add a time, and choose your preferred time and brightness level.

The app can also automatically dim your displays after a period of inactivity. This way, if you step away from your desk for a while, your screens will gently fade to a lower brightness and save a bit of energy.

Then there are Profiles, which take automation to a whole new level. You can create profiles that automatically adjust brightness or change the shortcut overlay behavior depending on the app you’re using. For instance, you might want your monitor to dim slightly when you’re listening to music on Spotify, or stay bright and crisp when you’re editing photos or browsing the web.

You can set up different profiles for your most used apps. There’s even an option to add these profiles to the right-click menu in the system tray, so you can switch between your pre-defined setups manually.

Custom hotkeys make multi-monitor control lightning fast

Save you dozens of clicks every day

Sometimes, even with the Twinkle Tray flyout, changing the monitor settings can feel like one click too many. That’s where custom hotkeys come in. Twinkle Tray lets you assign your own keyboard shortcuts to control brightness, contrast, and volume at once.

You can create hotkeys to increase or decrease brightness for all monitors at once, or even fine-tune each display individually. Setting them up is easy. Open Twinkle Tray Settings, head to the Hotkeys tab, and define what each key combination should do.

For example, you might set Alt + Ctrl + I to set your monitors to a specific brightness level that feels just right for working late at night. If you have multiple displays, you can even assign different brightness levels for each one using the same shortcut. The possibilities are endless.

At first, Twinkle Tray seems like a basic app for controlling the brightness of external monitors, and honestly, there are plenty of apps that do the same. But once you dive into its settings and explore what it can really do, you start to see how thoughtfully designed it is.