Brightness Slider
Brightness Slider is a menu-bar utility for macOS that lets users adjust screen brightness with fine-grained control, particularly at very low brightness levels. It provides keyboard shortcuts for raising and lowering brightness, a draggable slider in the menu bar, and a start-at-login option. The app is useful for users whose keyboards lack dedicated brightness keys, those working in dark environments, or anyone needing smoother dimming transitions than the system allows. It combines backlight adjustment (where the hardware supports it) with a semi-transparent overlay method to achieve perceptually smooth dimming across a wider range.
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1 suggestionThe search results mention that Brightness Slider has shipped a Universal Binary version (1.0.4) for older macOS releases, but no clear evidence of a current native Apple Silicon build was found in recent sources. The primary download appears to still be an Intel-only 64-bit build for OS X 10.8 and later. Given that Apple is removing Rosetta 2 in macOS 28 (September 2028) — roughly 27 months from now — you should contact the developer at ACT Productions to confirm whether a native Apple Silicon build is planned or already available. If the project is no longer actively maintained, the community-recommended alternative is MonitorControl, an open-source utility that controls both built-in and external display brightness and is confirmed to run natively on Apple Silicon Macs. For pure built-in display brightness control, the native Control Center brightness slider in modern macOS is also a viable option, though it offers less granular dimming control at very low levels than Brightness Slider.
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