Changing the screen brightness in Windows 11 is super straightforward, but sometimes it gets squirrelly — the slider disappears, the controls don’t work, or it just refuses to budge. This can be frustrating, especially if you’re trying to save battery or make the screen more comfortable at night. Luckily, there are a few things to check that might get that slider back or make it work smoothly. The main idea is to get your display drivers up to date and ensure some hidden settings aren’t messing with your brightness controls. After a couple of tweaks, it should be smooth sailing again.
How to Change Screen Brightness in Windows 11
Adjust via Settings — The usual way
First, the default method — head to Settings > System > Display. Find the brightness slider and drag it to your preferred level. If it’s missing or not working, then it’s probably a driver issue or some settings glitch. Expect the brightness to adjust immediately when you move that slider. Nothing fancy needed here, but if your slider is gone, you’ll need to troubleshoot.
Fix 1: Update your display drivers
This is probably the most common reason the brightness slider vanishes or stops working. Outdated or corrupt display drivers can cause Windows to lose track of brightness control. You can do this through Device Manager > Display adapters: right-click your graphics card (it might be Intel, AMD, or NVIDIA), then pick Update driver. Choose Search automatically for drivers. On some machines, this fixes the problem, but others might need the specific driver from the manufacturer’s website. For example, if you have an NVIDIA GPU, screenshot the driver version in their control panel and compare it with what’s on their site — sometimes manual download is the better route.
Speaking of which, some folks find that reinstalling the display drivers helps. You can go to Device Manager, right-click your display adapter, select Uninstall device, then reboot. Windows will try to reinstall the basic driver, but it’s worth downloading the latest one directly from your GPU maker if problems persist.
Fix 2: Enable automatic brightness (sometimes disabled)
Another weird one — on some setups, the adaptive brightness setting might be turned off, or more likely, it’s just not enabled by default. To check, go to Settings > System > Power & Battery > Additional power settings. Then click on your current plan and hit Change plan settings > Change advanced power settings. Find Display > Enable adaptive brightness. Set both *On battery* and *Plugged in* to On. This tells Windows to auto-adjust based on lighting, which can seem conflicting but often helps to keep things consistent, especially in bright or dim environments.
It’s kind of weird, but sometimes toggling this setting on and off a few times resets whatever bug makes the slider disappear. On some machines, this fixes the vertical slider problem, but on others, it just improves the auto mode.
Fix 3: Reset display settings and troubleshoot UI glitches
If things are just wonky, resetting display settings can sometimes help. Open Command Prompt or PowerShell as admin and run:
displayswitch /extendThis forces Windows to reset display configurations. Sometimes, a quick logout/login or a full reboot after this makes the brightness controls reappear or start working again. Also, check whether the brightness controls work in Device Manager > Monitor > Generic PnP Monitor. If they’re grayed out or missing, updating or reinstalling that device might help.
To make Windows refresh its brightness controls, you might also try resetting Windows Explorer: press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to open Task Manager, find Windows Explorer in Processes, right-click, and select Restart. It’s a quick way to fix UI weirdness, including stuck sliders.
Fix 4: Check Windows updates or try a clean boot
If nothing else works, go to Settings > Windows Update and make sure your system is up to date. Sometimes, bugs related to UI or drivers get patched in updates. If you’re feeling daring, a clean boot to disable third-party apps might reveal if some software is messing with your display settings — easier said than done, but sometimes that’s the root cause.
But overall, yeah, making sure your drivers are good and your adaptive brightness setting is OK tends to fix most issues with the slider disappearing or not working right. Sometimes Windows just likes to randomly break stuff, and a little fiddling is needed to get things back to normal.
Summary
- Update your display drivers manually via Device Manager or the GPU manufacturer’s site
- Check and enable adaptive brightness in Power & Battery settings
- Reset display configurations with command-line tricks or a reboot
- Update Windows to the latest version
Wrap-up
Fingers crossed, this gets your brightness slider back in line. Mostly, it’s about making sure drivers are current and Windows isn’t fighting itself in the background. If the slider still won’t show or respond, you might want to look into more advanced driver reinstalls or even a system reset, but those are last resorts. Usually, the driver update or enabling adaptive brightness does the trick. Good luck, and hopefully this saves a few hours some poor soul spends hunting down the issue.