How to create display setting profiles for a monitor on Windows 10
Not all media looks the same. Some might be dark e.g. a game or a much awaited battle scene in an otherwise well-shot TV series, and you may have to increase the brightness and contrast on your screen to comfortably view it. Other media might be a bit too bright, and you have to tone the brightness and contrast down to make it easier on the eyes. Getting these settings just right takes time which is why it’s a good idea to create display setting profiles for your screen. These profiles basically save the display configuration that’s currently set and allow you to switch to them whenever you need to.
In order to create display setting profiles, you need an app that can save and execute them. Nirsoft has a free utility called ControlMyMonitor that does the trick. Before you start using this app, you should know that in our tests, it did not work with an internal display. It did work fine with an external monitor. The app is free so there’s no harm trying it out with your own internal display.
Create display setting profiles
Download and run ControlMyMonitor. Allow it to detect your monitor’s settings. If you have a multi-monitor set up, you can open the dropdown at the top and select a different monitor. Wait for its settings to load.
Once the settings load, you can change them one-by-one, and the changes will be reflected live on your monitor. You can change all sorts of things in addition to the brightness and contrast. For items you don’t recognize, it’s best to leave them the way they are.
Once you have everything set up the way you want it, click the save icon and save the settings as a CFG file. Change the settings again to whatever you need, and again save them as a CFG file.
To load settings, go to File>Load Monitor Config and select the CFG file with the display settings you want to load.
Your display’s brightness, contrast, and other components should update to reflect the settings in the file. It is possible that if you’re using an external monitor, its input source changes when you load a CFG file. For example, my monitor is connected via an HDMI port but loading a CFG file makes it so that it looks for input via DVI. That’s easy enough to change. The app has small little flukes like this but it works great otherwise.
If the only thing you need to change about your display is its brightness, you can forgo using this app and just make do with custom power plans. Create different power plans that are identical except for the level of brightness that they use. You can use different apps to trigger a change in the power plan, or change it manually when you need to.
