Screen Dimming for Vista

If you're running Vista on an iMac, you may find the screen too bright, even when turning the brightness all the way down using the BootCamp controls. I always use the excellent Mac program Shades when running Leopard on my iMac, but I was frustrated by the lack of a similar program when running Vista, so I wrote VistaShades to do something similar.

Before

Before

After (20% dimming)

After

Instructions

The program is easy to use:

  1. Uninstall any existing version of VistaShades.
  2. Download the program (below)
  3. Unzip the file
  4. Double-click "Setup" to install
  5. Open the VistaShades program under Start > Programs. The screen will dim by 20% initially. Use the slider to set your preferred level of brightness.
  6. When you click OK, the program will minimize to the system tray (lower right corner of the screen).
    7. Sys_tray
  7. Click the shades icon to re-open the settings window any time you need to adjust the brightness.
  8. To make VistaShades start automatically when Windows starts, check the "AutoStart" box.

Download

Terms of use: VistaShades is a free program released under the MIT License. By clicking Download, you agree to the terms of this license.

The source code is available on Google Code

Keep in Touch

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FAQ's

- Does this only work on an iMac?

No, VistaShades should work on any Vista computer. I created it to overcome the limitation of how dim an iMac can be made by the hardware (which is BRIGHT). However, it should work in other circumstances where the hardware and software controls still leave the screen too bright.

- Does this work on other versions of Windows?

It hasn't been tested but should work on XP SP2 with .NET Framework version 3.0 or above installed.