MoreDim

MoreDim is a lightweight Windows desktop utility that dims your displays beyond the minimum brightness available in Windows. It places a translucent black overlay over each connected monitor, so you can keep working comfortably in a dark room.

MoreDim changes the appearance of the screen with an overlay. It does not change your monitor's hardware brightness or Windows display settings.

Features

• Adjust additional dimming from 0% to 85%.
• Apply the overlay to every connected display.
• Continue using apps normally; mouse and keyboard input passes through the overlay.
• Choose whether closing the settings window minimizes MoreDim to the notification area or exits and removes the dimming overlay.
• Optionally start MoreDim when you sign in to Windows.
• Request that Windows exclude the dimming overlay from supported screenshots and recordings.
• Reopen the controls by double-clicking the tray icon. Right-click the icon to toggle dimming or quit.

Requirements

• Windows 10 or later.
• .NET 8 SDK to build and run from source.

Download

Download the latest Windows executable from the GitHub Releases page. The release asset is a self-contained, single-file x64 build and does not require the .NET runtime to be installed.

Run from source

Clone the repository, open PowerShell in the project directory, and run:

dotnet run

The app opens with 35% additional dimming enabled. Adjust the slider in the settings window to change the level. By default, closing the window exits MoreDim and removes the overlay. Enable Minimize to tray when closing with X to keep it running in the notification area; use Quit in the tray menu to exit completely.

Enable Start with Windows in the settings window to launch MoreDim when you sign in. This setting applies to your Windows user account.

Publish a standalone app

To publish a self-contained, single-file 64-bit Windows executable that does not require the .NET runtime to be installed:

dotnet publish -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained true -p:PublishSingleFile=true

The executable is written to:

bin/Release/net8.0-windows/win-x64/publish/

How it works and limitations

MoreDim creates a click-through black overlay window on each display. It requests capture exclusion through SetWindowDisplayAffinity, supported for WDA_EXCLUDEFROMCAPTURE starting with Windows 10 version 2004. Windows and capture applications may not honor the request in every capture path, so exclusion is not guaranteed. Dimming is a visual overlay and does not lower the panel's physical backlight power. The dimming level resets to 35% when the app restarts. The minimize-to-tray preference is saved beside the executable, and the startup preference is registered for the current Windows user.

License

MoreDim is licensed under the MIT License.