In this article, we will discuss how to install the Brightness Controller on Ubuntu and keep the display brightness easily adjustable.
The Brightness Controller is a software-based dimmer to control the brightness of your computer’s display. You often want to change your monitor’s brightness based on eye comfort. Even though there are ways to do this manually, this article will help you install a Brightness Controller so you can set the brightness of your monitor at a finer level.
We’ll start with a brief introduction, then we’ll discuss the installation process. To be followed by how to uninstall the software.
Introduction to Brightness Controller
The Brightness Controller adjusts and manages the brightness of primary and secondary displays in Linux. The application changes red, green, and blue color ratios on the screen through color profiles at the software level. For this purpose, we shall use the xrandr package. It is a small utility available in Linux that has the following features:
- Developed in Python and PySide.
- Open source released under GPL-3.
- It can control the brightness, RGB, and color temperature of displays.
- The Brightness Controller can be used for multiple display screens.
- It can be used even on desktop computers to control brightness.
- Provides options for saving and loading of color profile can be performed.
The following table provides the basic information about the Brightness Controller:
- Language Interface: English
- Developer: Amit Seal Ami and other
- Programming language: Python
- License: GPL v3
- Software website: lordamit.github.io/Brightness
- GitHub: https://github.com/LordAmit/Brightness
The Brightness Controller is a graphical user interface (GUI) based application. Below, you can see how the Brightness Controller appears on the screen. It has panels for primary and secondary display and advanced options to manage the brightness and color temperature.
Why do we need Brightness Controller?
So why do we need the brightness control when the hardware keys can control the brightness? The problem with the hardware keys is that they can only control brightness at discrete values (i.e., 20%, 40%, 60%, and so on). Generally, the brightness values are changed via the hardware keys “Fn + F8” or “Fn + F9”.
The brightness control provides fine-grained control to set the brightness value from 1% to 100%. Underneath, the Brightness Controller itself uses the hardware control of your monitor.
Note that this software doesn’t decrease the backlight intensity, so it will not be fruitful in saving batteries. However, you can use it to protect your eyes.
How to Install Brightness Controller on Ubuntu
We will now discuss the installation of the Brightness Controller. There are two ways that can be used to install it in Ubuntu. First, via the ppa repository and second, via pip. In addition, a package for Arch and derivatives is also available in the AUR.
Note that the Arch User Repository (AUR) is a community-driven repository for Arch users.
Installation via ppa
The Brightness Controller is available via the ppa repository. It can be easily installed by adding ppa to Ubuntu’s standard repository. Open your Terminal and type the following command:
$sudo add-apt-repository ppa:apandada1/brightness-controller
That shall add the repository. If asked for the password, type yours and update the system using this command:
$sudo apt-get update
Now, you can install the Brightness Controller by using the following command:
$sudo apt-get install brightness-controller
After some time, the software will be installed on your system. To run it, type the application name on the Ubuntu dashboard and then click on the icon to run, as shown in the following snapshot:
For version 1 with 4 monitor support, you can install it with this command:
$sudo apt install brightness-controller-simple
Installation via pip
You can also install the Brightness Controller application via pip, Python’s preferred installer program. In this step, you’re required to have python3.8 or above and PyQt5. First, make sure that Python is installed on your computer. You can check if Python is installed by running the following command on the Terminal:
$python --version
If you don’t see the details for the Python version, you can install it via the following command:
$sudo apt-get install python3.8
You can then install pyqt using this command:
$pip install PyQt5
Lastly, you can install the Brightness Controller via the following command:
$pip install brightness-controller-linux
Note: When active, the Brightness Controller places an icon in your system tray.
Uninstallation of Brightness Controller
If you want to remove the Brightness Controller, you can simply type the following command on the Terminal:
$sudo apt-get remove brightness-controller && sudo apt-get autoremove
If you have installed it via pip, you can remove the software via the following command:
$pip uninstall brightness-controller-linux
In this article, we have discussed the Brightness Controller application in Linux. It is a small utility that can be used to control the brightness of your monitor at a finer level. We also tackled the installation steps for Brightness Controller via the ppa repository and pip, and how to uninstall it.
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