I found this in my file system. Review and see if you can use any of the information provided.

If you find yourself straining to read the text on your Dell laptop screen, it may be the backlight needs to be brighter. Or while you are working in a darkened room, you may want to decrease the brightness of the screen. With these easy steps, you can adjust the brightness of your Dell laptop.

Here are the steps to adjusting the brightness of your Dell laptop screen:

• Right-click anywhere on the desktop. A drop-down menu will show, after which, choose “Display Properties”.
• Choose “Color Correction”. This sub-window will let you adjust the hue, brightness and contrast settings of your laptop screen.
• Find the brightness slider bar. Move the bar to the right to increase brightness and to the left to decrease it.
• Left-click on “Apply”. The brightness of the screen should change based on your selection.
• Close the “Display Properties” window.
• There are other ways to change the brightness conditions of your laptop screen. Use them in case the aforementioned steps do not work.
  • Alternate method #1. Hold the Fn button down while pressing the up-arrow key to increase brightness or down-arrow key to decrease it.
  • Alternate method #2. An ambient light sensor is equipped in certain Dell laptop models. Placed at the bottom of the display panel, the sensor detects surrounding light levels and adds or reduces the backlight by itself accordingly. You may switch the ambient light sensor on or off by holding down the Fn key while pressing the left-arrow key. If your unit does have an ambient light sensor, avoid covering it with tape or dirt.
  • Alternate method #3. Enter the BIOS setup by pressing the F2 key when the initial boot screen appears. Once in BIOS, go to the “Video” options, look for the default brightness setting then modify it to your preference. Afterwards, press the ESC key then select Save and Exit to reboot the operating system.
  • Alternate method #4: Every Dell laptop has a program installed called “Dell Quickset”. Look at the taskbar for the Quickset icon, double-click to open the window then select “Hotkeys”. The brightness control is available among the menu items. If the icon is not in the taskbar, look for the Quickset application in the list of programs in the Star menu then click it. If your laptop does not have the “Dell Quickset” app, you can download the installer from the Dell support website. Look for it in their search bar, download the installer, run it, follow the instructions, then reboot the system if it asks you to.

Avoid setting the brightness level too high; it will strain your eyes and you will need to rest it more in between your laptop work. Remember to rest your eyes frequently when working in front of a monitor. You can also reduce battery consumption by working with minimal screen brightness. Your laptop will automatically lower its brightness setting when you remove the plug from the electrical socket, converting the model to battery mode.

I have the Alienware Laptop M17xR3 and found the manual for it and it says to click on the f5 button to decrease the brightness and i have done this but its not working. unless im doing something wrong...when i push f5 and the down arrow it goes thru the sites on the address bar in IE...this has already given me a headache...HELP

Thanks for that Gator6x4.

My old XPS had a much wider range of brightness, I'm not sure why they changed that.   I could literally feel my eyes getting smaller before this adjustment.

Changing the brightest with the graphics properties/options work.