brightness

A minimal command-line tool for controlling the built-in display brightness on Apple Silicon Macs.

Why

The standard tooling for brightness control is broken on Apple Silicon internal panels:

• AppleScript has no set brightness command
• The popular Homebrew brightness tool fails with an IOKit error (-536870201)
• m1ddc only drives external displays

The private DisplayServices framework is the one stateless, daemon-free path that works on the built-in panel.

Requirements

• macOS 13 or later
• Apple Silicon Mac

Install

git clone https://github.com/s-age/brightness.git
cd brightness
swift build -c release
cp .build/release/brightness /usr/local/bin/brightness

Usage

brightness [<value>]

  <value>   set main-display brightness, 0.0 (dark) … 1.0 (max)
  (no arg)  print the current brightness

Examples:

brightness          # print current value, e.g. 0.36
brightness 0.5      # set to 50%
brightness 1.0      # set to maximum

License

MIT