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baragona / Brightness

Sync macbook screen brightness to non-Apple external display.
Artistic License 2.0
79 stars 11 forks source link

Doesn't work when in mirrored mode #10

Open jorisw opened 5 years ago

jorisw commented 5 years ago

I'm on macOS Mojave 10.14.4 on a MacBook Pro 2016 Shitty Keyboard Edition, and I've just built and run the master branch.

I had my Mac and some random HDMI TV hooked up in Mirrored mode. Xcode showed in the console: 

2019-04-09 20:26:39.759901+0200 Brightness[48239:5597779] No driving display -- keeping old brightness

... until I disabled Mirrored mode in the Display system preferences. Then the app did exactly as advertised, which is very useful if you're travelling and watching videos on your hotel's TV set.

Perhaps the app could recognize the internal display of a MacBook regardless of Mirrored or Extended Desktop mode?

baragona commented 5 years ago

Very interesting... LOL @ "Shitty Keyboard Edition".

I actually don't know for sure if this is completely possible.

If one sets "Fake brightness" on the external, it may apply the same to the internal display. Making the internal display extra dark.

Only solution is to use "fake brightness" for both and keep internal at full brightness, which reduces contrast and is kinda ugly and no one likes it.

This app also has no GUI or interface, or keyboard interface, for changing brightness without a driving display. It has no source to read from in that case, that is, currently it is only designed as a "sync" without any ability to set the desired brightness level itself.

Any ideas?

You might look into other apps that use the same "fake brightness" technique (most external display brightness apps) and see how they behave in this case? if they will work for your case?

If you find a behavior that you like maybe it can be added here as well.

jorisw commented 5 years ago

Hmm. Didn’t think about the limitations you get once you’re in mirrored mode.

I’d say at least the Readme should say that for now this app only works when not Mirrored.

That said... any way to intercept the change to, or correct the hardware brightness? Probably no APIs for that? If there were you could just use fake brightness only for both screens.

jorisw commented 5 years ago

I would in my use case not mind fake brightness on both screens, as the only goal is to not have a hotel room fully illuminated late at night.

jorisw commented 5 years ago

As for setting the desired brightness without having keys, I’d vote for a slider just like the sound volume one provided by Apple. This would be useful when you’re remote controlling the mouse using an app such as TouchPad for iOS.

baragona commented 5 years ago

Can you try the latest update and see if it works for your case? Has a slider now.

jorisw commented 5 years ago

Sorry about the late reply. Works great, thanks! Tiny suggestion: a vertical slider would make it more conform to other such menu widgets, such as Apple's volume slider.

jorisw commented 5 years ago

Oh, so actually, I still get this in my console every few ms:

2019-06-19 22:40:28.273493+0200 Brightness[14820:24119902] No driving display -- keeping old brightness

.. This is when my MacBook is closed and hooked up to HDMI.