Screen brightness 100% with proprietary Nvidia driver

Question

After having installed the proprietary Nvidia driver on Debian Jessie in order to play Steam games (which I now can), I can't change the brightness at all, it is stuck at the maximum and is irritating my eyes at night. I have already tried all of the solutions in the Debian wiki

such as adding the line: Option "RegistryDwords" "EnableBrightnessControl=1;" to /etc/X11/xorg.conf and /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-nvidia.conf

but that has not worked, even though in the Debian forums it seems to work (marked solved):

xbacklight does not work at all, and I don't know what to do anymore. I will post any outputs for whatever terminal commands, please help.

How about `xrandr --output LVDS1 --brightness 0.4` (put your display instead of lvds1 if needed)? — jimmij, Jan 11 '16 at 00:33
`xrandr --output LVDS-0 --brightness 0.2` works! It doesn't seem to change the brightness at the hardware level, but it will save my eyes! Thanks to user jimmij! — anon76, Jan 11 '16 at 00:44
Yes, this is software change, and `echo 2 > /sys/class/backlight/acpi_video0/brightness` doesn't work? (again change `acpi_video0` to your device like intel_backlight etc.). — jimmij, Jan 11 '16 at 00:54
When I do `sudo echo 2 > /sys/class/backlight/asus-nb-wmi/brightness` I get: `bash: /sys/class/backlight/asus-nb-wmi/brightness: Permission denied` — anon76, Jan 11 '16 at 01:25
Try running `sudo -s` then the eco. Sudo doesn't work over piped echos in the way described. You need to do `echo "moo" | sudo tee /patch/to/file.txt` — Torxed, Jan 11 '16 at 08:44

score 6 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 12 '16 at 20:53

6

After adding the following line in your X device configuration

Option  "RegistryDwords"  "EnableBrightnessControl=1"

You can use the software xbacklight to adjust the brightness:

xbacklight -set 60

answered Nov 12 '16 at 20:53

semente

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Added that option to my /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-nvidia.conf in Debian 8 and now everything works normally in KDE – LatinSuD Jul 25 '17 at 20:17
Seems KDE is more forgiving than gnome, FWIW https://askubuntu.com/a/1152763/20972 – rogerdpack Jun 21 '19 at 04:35

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 30 '18 at 04:24

Complementing @semente answer:

xbacklight +10
xbacklight -10

increase and decrease the backlight in steps of 10%. They can be associated to keys with xbindkeys by following the instructions here. Below is sample of the .xbindkeysrc with this commands associated to the Windows + F5 and Windows + F6 keys:

"xbacklight +10"
 Mod4 + F6

"xbacklight -10"
 Mod4 + F5

score 1 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 05 '19 at 22:57

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I followed this tutorial to install NVidia driver for linux from NVidia:

http://allaboutlinux.eu/remove-nouveau-and-install-nvidia-driver-in-debian-8/2/

and now I have NVIDIA X Server Settings GUI which can be launched from applications drawer, then I go to GPU 0 --> CRT-0 --> Color Correction and I'm able to set brightness to negative value.

edited Apr 05 '19 at 22:57

Rui F Ribeiro

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answered Jun 15 '16 at 10:44

GPraz

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This doesn't change the backlight brightness. – Tim Richardson Feb 15 '17 at 03:04
thanks for this color correction settings, i didn't know that @TimRichardson, you could use ```xrandr --output HDMI-0 --brightness 0.7``` change the HDMI-0 with your monitor – haidarvm Dec 17 '20 at 03:21

Screen brightness 100% with proprietary Nvidia driver

3 Answers3