Windows has no brightness control for external monitors. To change brightness, contrast, input or volume you reach for the buttons under the screen, or you install the utility your monitor’s manufacturer ships. Those utilities only work with their own brand, and only with the models still on their support list.
sideband replaces all of them with one app.
Any monitor, any brand
sideband talks to displays over DDC/CI, the control standard monitors have supported since 1998. There is no list of supported models. sideband asks each display what it can do, so any monitor with DDC/CI turned on works, including older ones the manufacturer has stopped supporting. When you replace a monitor, your hotkeys and layouts carry over.
Laptop screens have no DDC/CI, but their brightness works too.
What it does
- Brightness, contrast, input source, volume and the red, green and blue gains, per display
- Sliders in the tray, or one command in a terminal:
sideband set all brightness 40 - Global hotkeys for brightness
- Window layouts you draw yourself, with windows snapping into the zones as you drag
- One command to arrange every open window, with an undo
- sideband checks values against the display’s limits, then reads them back to confirm
- Optionally starts with Windows
Get it
Download sideband.exe from the releases page. It is a single 347 KB file with a published SHA-256, and there is nothing to install.
You need 64-bit Windows 10 or 11, and DDC/CI enabled in your monitor’s on-screen menu. It runs no background service, needs no administrator rights and makes no network connections.