brightnessctl adjust screen brightness
======================================

Today I discovered to adjust the screen brightness on my AwesomeWM machine. Its a command line utility that you can use to adjust the brightness of your...

Date: June 11, 2025

Today I discovered `brightnessctl` to adjust the screen brightness on my
AwesomeWM machine. Its a command line utility that you can use to adjust the
brightness of your screen. A command line interface like this gives you the
ability to bind keys with something like [[xbindkeys]] or your window manager
configuration.

``` bash
sudo apt install brightnessctl
# or
paru -S brightnessctl
```

Now that you have it installed you can use it to adjust the brightness of your
screen, this worked particularly well for my laptop screen, I don't think this
works for monitors, in my experience they are usually controlled by the built
in osd.

``` bash
# Increase brightness by 10%
brightnessctl set +10%
# Decrease brightness by 10%
brightnessctl set 10%-
# Set brightness to 50%
brightnessctl set 50%
# Set brightness to 100%
brightnessctl set 100%
```

!!! note
 on my machine I had to use `sudo` to run the command, otherwise I got the following error:

 ``` bash
 Can't modify brightness: Permission denied

 You should run this program with root privileges.
 Alternatively, get write permissions for device files.
 ```