Dimmer

A lightweight, modern Windows desktop utility that allows you to dim your screen(s) globally below their hardware minimums using the native Windows Magnification API.

Features

• 🖥️ Global Fullscreen Dimming: Uses the native Windows Magnification API (MagSetFullscreenColorEffect) to adjust the screen matrix color scale. This provides smooth, hardware-independent soft dimming that applies globally across all screens.
• 📺 Full Web Video Compatibility: Works flawlessly with hardware-accelerated video playback on the web (e.g., YouTube, Netflix, Twitch). Many overlay-based screen dimmers fail to dim or flicker when videos are played in fullscreen; since this utility uses the native Windows Magnification API to transform the desktop display pipe directly, it dims web videos perfectly.
• 🎨 Premium Modern UI: Built with a sleek, dark-themed WPF interface featuring custom control templates, a smooth slider, and responsive interactive elements.
• 📥 System Tray Integration: Runs quietly in the background. Minimizing or closing the control panel hides it to the Windows Notification Area (System Tray).
• 💾 Settings Persistence: Saves your brightness settings automatically to %AppData%\DimmerClone\settings.json and restores them when the application starts.
• 🔌 Clean Restoration: Automatically restores your monitor brightness to 100% and uninitializes the magnification effect on exit so your screen is never left dim.

Tech Stack

• Framework: .NET 9.0 (WPF for GUI, Windows Forms for NotifyIcon)
• API: Windows Magnification API (P/Invoke to magnification.dll)
• OS: Windows 10 / 11

How to Use

1. Launch the Application: Run the executable DimmerClone.exe. The main control panel will open, and a custom icon will appear in your system tray (bottom-right of your taskbar).
2. Set Brightness: Drag the slider in the control panel to set the global brightness level:
   • Drag to the left to dim your screen (down to a safe software floor of 10%).
   • Drag to the right to increase brightness back to normal (100%).
3. Minimize / Close to Tray:
   • Click the minimize button (-) to minimize the control panel.
   • Click the close button (X) to hide the control panel. The application will continue running in the background.
4. Context Menu Controls: Right-click the system tray icon to open the menu:
   • Settings: Restores and shows the control panel.
   • Exit: Restores screen brightness back to 100% and closes the application completely.
5. Quick Restore: Double-click the tray icon at any time to quickly open the control panel.

Getting Started (For Developers)

Prerequisites

• Windows OS
• .NET 9.0 SDK

Clone & Build

To run and build the application from source:

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/yourusername/my_dimmer.git
   cd my_dimmer

2. Build and run the project locally (for development):

   dotnet build
   dotnet run --project DimmerClone

3. Publish as a self-contained, single-file executable (requires no .NET runtime installed on the target PC):

   cd DimmerClone
   dotnet publish -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained true -p:PublishSingleFile=true -p:IncludeNativeLibrariesForSelfExtract=true -p:EnableCompressionInSingleFile=true

   The compiled executable DimmerClone.exe will be generated in DimmerClone/bin/Release/net9.0-windows/win-x64/publish/. Just copy that single file anywhere and run it!