Dim your monitor to save your eyes
Mac Tip #347, 16 July 2008

Is your screen too bright? Does the glare hurt your eyes, or even give you headaches? Make it a bit dimmer — you may find you’re less tired after a session at your Mac. Here’s how.

Most Macs have a couple of ways to change the screen’s brightness, and if you use an external monitor, that may have its own settings too.

The System Preference Display Pane

Go to System Preferences > Displays and click on the Display tab. Look for a Brightness slider.

Slide the slider all the way to the left but keep your finger pressing down on the mouse button as the screen should turn completely black. If you let go of the button you may be stuck with a black screen where you can’t see the control to make it brighter again.

Now slide the slider slightly to the right again. The screen should light up. Move the slider slowly to the right until you find a brightness that is comfortable for you.

Light levels tend to change during the day so you may need to adjust the brightness according to the ambient light.

Mac laptops usually include buttons for changing screen brightness. On my MacBook and MacBook Pro the F1 and F2 keys make the screen dimmer and brighter respectively.

if you have a desktop Mac check the keyboard and also the Mac itself for buttons that may change brightness. Try the Mac’s Help menu if you need further assistance.

My MacBook Pro includes an ambient light sensor. The screen automatically changes brightness according to the light falling on the computer. In the screenshot above you can see I enabled this option below the brightness slider.

That same option is not available on my MacBook, because it doesn’t contain an ambient light sensor.

In fact, with the ambient light sensor enabled, the dot on the brightness slider pulsates gently as a subtle reminder that brightness will change automatically.

The ambient light sensor must be under the right-hand speaker on my MacBook Pro as if I cover that speaker grille with my hand the screen dims.

Whichever Mac you use, try out the Brightness slider. You may find your eyes are less tired after using the computer.

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Leopard Screen Sharing — the Ghost in the Mac
Mac Tip #329, 12 March 2008

Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) introduced a feature that really helps those of us who have dealings with more than one Mac: Screen Sharing. It allows you to operate one Mac while sitting at another.

The screenshot shows me changing things on my Mac mini while I’m using my MacBook. I’m working entirely on the MacBook and am not physically touching any part of the Mac mini.

On the left of the screenshot is this Tip, as I write it on my MacBook. On the right is part of my MacBook’s current desktop picture.

The window in the middle of the screenshot shows my Mac mini’s plain blue desktop, with the Dock at the bottom, a Finder window open, and some windows belonging to my webcam software. I’m about to click a button to change a setting.

Set up Screen Sharing in Leopard

1. Go to System Preferences on the machine you want to share.
2. Click on the Sharing Preference Pane.
3. Check the box beside Screen Sharing.
4. Close the System Preferences widow if you wish.

There are plenty of ways to refine Screen Sharing, but that gets you started.

To use Screen Sharing

1. On a different Mac using Leopard go to the Finder and create a New Window (Command N). A Finder window appears.
2. Look in the Sidebar for the name of the machine whose screen you want to view. Select that machine. The screenshot shows I’ve selected terra-firma, my Mac mini.
3. Click the Share Screen … button near the top of the Finder window. A Screen Sharing window appears displaying the screen on the machine you wish to control.

Now when you click or scroll around in the Screen Sharing window you will be controlling the shared Mac.

If someone else is sitting at that Mac they will see the cursor move, windows open and close and so on as though a ghost were operating the computer.

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