[formerly_proven]

I dunno. The OSD on Dells is pretty simple. You press the topmost button twice, up/down to adjust, lowest button to save and exit. Since my office has windows, I've been doing this two to four times a day on most days for years. Doesn't bother me too much (it's pretty quick though because I largely only use the 0-40 range, which is about 20-120 nits). On my LG it's even quicker, push the joystick back, then forward/back to change, push in or timeout to save and exit.

Some people say they'd like ambient light sensors, but I'm not sure I'd wanna use something like that. Sometimes I do find the changing brightnesses on mobile devices irritating.

Changing this directly in the OS would be a better UX, though.

[tjoff]

That might work if you only have one display. But on more than one that gets tiresome real quick.

On linux I use ddccontrol to control the brightness on all displays at once (using a simple for loop in the terminal).

I plan to write a script for it that would allow me to bring up a dialog and enter brightness from just a shortcut, but this is good enough til that itch comes.

I'm sure there are alternatives to all operating systems.

[cillian64]

I have a Dell U2415 which is great for this. You can create custom colour/brightness/contrast profiles and assign them to hotkeys. I have one nice bright one for dark terminals or when the sun's out, and a darker lower contrast one for when I have a bright white website or document to read and the office is a bit dimmer. It's two quick button presses to change between these presets.

I think I'd quite like something which adapted brightness and contrast to ambient light as well as the brightness and contrast of what's on screen. With mobile devices this can be a pain as you move around and in and out of shadows, but I feel it could work a lot better on a desktop display. The display could even have the light sensor on its back so it can work out what its backdrop looks like.

[moonbug]

that's a shit-ton of clicks compared to a pair of up/down buttons.