While I was playing around with the Keyboard Shortcuts for the previous post, I noticed that there’s a shortcut for adjusting the contrast on my MacBook. I’ve been looking for a way to do this for ages, and it turns out that it’s possible to do this with a shortcut, albeit, not a very obvious one:
To increase the contrast use: Ctrl-Alt-Command-. (that’s a full stop)
To decrease the contrast use: Ctrl-Alt-Command-, (and that’s a comma)
I’ve changed them to Ctrl-Alt-PgUp and Ctrl-Alt-PgDn on my Mac – it’s so much easier to remember.
Tags: contrast, keyboard shortcut, Mac OS X
this is bollocks. doesnt woek at all.
It works on both of my MacBooks. Can’t answer for yours.
Worked for me, and was just what I was looking for, Thankyou :)
Wow… thank you kindly. Works great.
AWESOME! I have been wanting to do this all afternoon with our new MacBook so I “Googled” how to “change the contrast on a macbook” and your post came up first. Works GREAT!!!
Glad to be of assistance! Thanks for the comment.
Paul.
Works great
good advice
Thanks Mikel and Egyptian.
For me, only the following combinations worked:
Ctrl-Opt-Cmd-,
(and)
Ctrl-Opt-Cmd-.
My 13″ aluminum MacBook started in the lowest contrast setting and could not be reduced further. However, the contrast could be increased using the above shortcuts.
Those are the default keyboard shortcuts, I changed mine using the Keyboard & Mouse PrefPane to something more manageable.
Thank you so much!!
You’re welcome Andrey.
Sweet…I thought this was possible and after very little searching I found the answer I was looking for!
Any chance you know how to adjust the contrast on only the MacBook display when you have a secondary display attached? I notice that when you use the given command to adjust contrast, it adjusts both screens simultaneously.
Lastly, that command seems to change what is sent to the display, rather than the display itself. I don’t know much about graphics and displays, but when you go to the extreme of high contrast, it seems to only render a few tones (like 8-bit), rather than the whole gamut, but in higher contrast.
Hiya,
Delighted that this helped you.
Unfortunately, I don’t know if it is possible to change the contrast separately – I don’t have an external monitor to test with.
One suggestion I would make is to adjust the contrast on the Mac with the external display disconnected and then connect the external display.
Increasing the contrast on your LCD “turns up” the brightness of the backlight in your LCD.
As the backlight gets brighter, the colours on the screen become whiter and you lose definition between different shades – hence the reason it looks like you’re using 8-bit colours.
As you dim the backlight, you approach black and the colours on your screen become blacker.
Which contrast level works for you depends a lot on the ambient lighting in your work area – low light conditions may require a higher contrast rate etc.
Hope this helps you out,
Regards,
Paul.