Set brightness of display via numerical scale?

[robgendreau]

Is there a way to set the brightness/luminance of a Mac built-in display via actual numerical values? either by entering a number or a slider with a scale with markings, say "120cd/m2" for example? I can do it in my colorimeter's software, but if I need to change it then it's guess work with Apple's sliders in Displays or on a keyboard. I've seen Terminal commands to do so, but it's like "key code -.5" etc, so relative. I would guess that the system doesn't have an actual "real" scale like the colorimeter, but I'd settle for something that at least gave me a set point around say the 120cd/m2 I set with the meter, sort of like a bookmark.

 

[Brian33]

Interesting question. I don't know of a way to what you want with normal macOS commands, but I found this osxdaily.com page (scroll down) that describes a Brew command that can be installed and used at the command line. For example, 'brightness 0.5' to set the brightness to the half-way point.

I use Brew and it's great, but I haven't tried the "brightness" formula.

Source code and useful comments can be seen here: https://github.com/nriley/brightness