Windows 11 has made many changes from Windows 10, and a lot of those changes can be seen with the new design. After upgrading your great laptop or PC to the new OS, you might be a bit confused by the new settings app and all the options available to you. Fortunately, it's easy to get used to everything once you've used Windows 11 for a bit. Still, it's possible to struggle with some of these changes, such as learning how to change the screen brightness.

It doesn't help that sometimes Windows 11 will also automatically adjust your screen brightness based on battery life and ambient lighting conditions. We'll show how you can adjust the brightness, tweak settings for adaptive control, and what desktop users can do to get more control over these actions.

How to change brightness in Windows 11 by using Quick Actions

Windows 11 includes a new Quick Actions panel that will let you change certain settings on your PC. This includes controls for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, brightness, and sound. Here's how you can use this panel to quickly adjust your screen brightness:

1. To open the Quick Actions panel, click the battery, sound, or internet icons in the taskbar.
2. Click the brightness slider.
3. To adjust brightness, drag the slider to the left to decrease it, or to the right to increase it.

That's all there is to it. This is the most basic way of controlling brightness on Windows 11. Note that this brightness slider is available only if you're using a laptop, and you won't find it if you're using a desktop with an external display. We'll see how desktop users can adjust their brightness in a later section.

While this basic control works great, there are more advanced steps you can take to control the brightness. For example, you can also adjust brightness based on battery life and ambient lighting.

How to change brightness in Windows 11 automatically based on battery life

If you want to extend battery life on Windows 11, you can turn on a feature that automatically adjusts your screen brightness based on the remaining battery life. This feature is hidden behind the Battery Saver mode, and here's how you can turn it on:

1. Press Windows + I on your keyboard to open the Settings app.
2. From here, click System and scroll down to find and select Power & battery.
3. In this menu, find and click the Battery Saver setting to open a list of additional settings for the feature.
4. Enable the Lower screen brightness when using battery saver setting if it's not already turned on.
5. If you want the brightness to lower automatically at a certain battery level, click the Turn battery saver on automatically setting.
6. Select any of the percentage options, or select Always if you want Battery Saver to always be enabled.

This setting will significantly decrease the brightness of your display whenever your battery reaches a certain level. It's also a great indicator that lets you know when it's time to plug in a charger. It's enabled by default, but if you find it annoying that your brightness automatically gets dimmer, you can turn off the Lower screen brightness when using battery saver setting entirely.

How to automatically adjust brightness based on current lighting conditions

If you're using a laptop, Windows 11 has a setting that changes brightness automatically based on the lighting conditions around you. This is similar to the adaptive brightness feature that's on your phone. Here's how you can turn it on:

1. Press Windows + I on your keyboard to open the Settings app.
2. Click System, and select Display from the menu on the right.
3. Under the Brightness & color settings, click the drop-down arrow next to the Brightness setting.
4. From the drop-down menu, check the box next to Change brightness automatically when lighting changes.

This will essentially turn on an adaptive brightness setting on your Windows 11 laptop. On some laptops, it's possible that this setting may be enabled by default. You can turn it off if you find it annoying, but it does help in extending battery life.

How to change brightness in Windows 11 for desktops

If you're using a desktop PC with an external monitor or have another monitor connected to your laptop, you can't use any of the native brightness controls in Windows 11. Fortunately, most monitors have built-in controls that allow you to change the brightness, contrast, sharpness, and a multitude of other settings. These are known as OSD controls, and you can find buttons around the back of most monitors to bring up the OSD menu. You can search online to see how you can use the OSD menu for your specific monitor, as it can vary from model to model.

If you're using an NVIDIA graphics card, you also use the NVIDIA Control Panel to change brightness and other display settings. Alternatively, you can also download various third-party programs like Monitorion to add a brightness slider to the taskbar.

Other display settings in Windows 11

All the methods above work in different ways, but the end result is pretty much the same. Usually, the manual brightness slider is the quickest and easiest way to control brightness, but if you need more control, the options are certainly there. Beyond simple brightness controls, there are a lot of display settings in Windows 11 that can improve your overall experience. For example, you can use and manage multiple monitors easily with a few tweaks.

If you're completely new to Microsoft's latest OS and feel overwhelmed with all the changes, we recommend reading our quick-start guide on Windows 11 so you can get up to speed.