A while back I wrote about Twinkle Tray and how fantastic it is for adjusting the settings for your external monitor. But while that's still a great app, there are other options worth considering if you want monitor controls. Two great examples are ClickMonitorDDC and Monitorian. The latter was actually mentioned by one of our readers in the comments of the above article.
At their core, these two apps do something Windows 11 can't and shouldn't: control the brightness and settings of an external monitor connected to your PC. But even beyond that, there are good reasons to use both apps, so let's take a closer look.
They are incredibly light
While retaining all the features you need
One of the big points raised in the comments on this Twinkle Tray article is how large the app is, as it takes up several hundred megabytes on your PC. Both Monitorian and ClickMonitorDDC are on the opposite end of the spectrum here, as they are incredibly lightweight. ClickMonitorDDC takes up less than 2MB of space on Windows 11 according to the Settings app, and Monitorian doesn't even reach 1MB. Compared to Twinkle Tray, both are incredibly lightweight.
If you value your system resources highly, this is a good reason to use these apps instead of Twinkle Tray, as it can free up space for other things. I'd say most modern PCs shouldn't have much of a problem with this, but considering these apps have most of the same features as Twinkle Tray, it seems odd that Twinkle Tray is so large.
All functions at a glance
Changing settings is much faster
Because both of these apps are so lightweight, you don't need a separate window for more detailed settings either. Any options you want to change are available right from the flyout menu in your taskbar. Monitorian starts a little simpler with a basic brightness slider, but you can add things like contrast sliders and even change the minimum and maximum brightness for each monitor right from the flyout.
ClickMonitorDDC goes even further with a more complex interface that offers even more possibilities. You can change the brightness, contrast, and even volume and saturation of supported monitors directly from the flyout that appears, and see a summary of your settings as separate icons in the notification area. You even have direct access to the ability to change the red, green, and blue levels of your monitor to your liking. ClickMonitorDDC's interface looks like a dedicated settings window, but it's right there when you click the system tray icon. It shows all of your monitors and all the options you need without having to jump through hoops.
Command line controls
For terminal users
Twinkle Tray allowed you to set keyboard shortcuts to change certain settings, and Monitorian offers this as well, although it requires payment. However, ClickMonitorDDC has a slightly different feature: the ability to change commands from the command line. It supports a wide range of arguments that allow you to change brightness, contrast, color levels and color temperatures, switch between presets, and even change the input used by the monitor. There's a lot more here than the average user would ever need.
You can also add the most commonly used command line commands to the pop-up menu on the taskbar, so you can make more specific setting changes more quickly without having to type the command each time. Alternatively, you can assign these command line arguments to a hotkey, so you can still use the keyboard but don't have to open the Windows Terminal.
There's even an option to assign commands to a combination of keyboard inputs and mouse wheel movements. For example, I can press Ctrl and Shift while scrolling up to increase the brightness of my monitor. It's really impressive how many features ClickMonitorDDC packs into such a small app size.
They are great ways to add features that Windows lacks
Ultimately, both apps are a great choice if you want to change monitor brightness and other settings for your external monitor, as Windows still doesn't offer this feature by default. At first, I thought I would stick with Twinkle Tray, but once I finished testing these apps, I changed my mind.
ClickMonitorDDC in particular is super impressive. It has so many features and the fact that you can control everything from the command line is fantastic. It's a shame that this project seems to have been abandoned, but even if it's been three years since the last update, the app is still functional and can do more than most alternatives. In fact, the part about changing brightness using keyboard and mouse shortcuts pretty much made me move on from Twinkle Tray.
And then there's the fact that they're so lightweight. Both apps are so small that I hope the developer of this app will look for ways to make them even smaller.