A small sun in your menu bar. One click and your XDR display goes into HDR mode, lifting the whole screen evenly — up to about 40 % brighter than where the macOS slider stops.
macOS 13 or later · Universal · Under 2 MB
The Glow menu, shown up close on the MacBook Pro display.
See the difference
One screen, one moment, one set of colours. Left of the seam is the macOS brightness slider at its maximum. Right of it is the same screen with Glow on Max — up to about 40 % brighter, and not one shade warmer.
Same picture, same colours, same moment. The only thing that changes across the seam is how much light the panel is allowed to emit.
Drag the handle · simulated on an SDR page
How it works
Glow is one small app. It adds a sun to your menu bar and nothing else — no dock icon, no background helpers, no kernel extensions.
Open Glow-1.0.0.dmg and drag Glow to your Applications folder. The whole app is under 2 MB.
A small sun appears in the menu bar. Click it and choose Turn On, or press ⌃ ⌥ ⌘ G from any app.
Low, Medium or Max. Glow remembers your choice, and Launch at Login brings it back with your Mac.
The icon
Eight rays and a disc. Outline when Glow is off, filled when it is on. You never have to open the menu to know the state of your screen.
The menu
Turn it on. Choose Low, Medium or Max. Decide whether it starts with your Mac. There is no window, no preferences pane and nothing to configure.
The panel
Glow drives the XDR panel into HDR mode and scales the display's gamma table linearly, so the entire screen rises evenly. No tone-mapping change, no colour shift, no white layer on top.
The shortcut
Press ⌃ ⌥ ⌘ G in any app to toggle Glow. Step onto a terrace, hit the shortcut, keep working. Step back inside and hit it again.
Why Glow
Most brightness apps paint a lighter layer over your screen, which washes out colour and kills contrast. Glow does the opposite: it asks the panel for light it already has.
Glow drives the XDR panel into HDR mode. The extra light comes from the display itself.
The gamma table is scaled linearly, so the whole screen gets evenly brighter instead of clipping.
No tone-mapping change, no colour shift, no white layer. Photo and design work looks the way you set it.
Factor 1.44 at Max, measured against the maximum of the macOS brightness slider.
Built-in Liquid Retina XDR, Pro Display XDR and other EDR displays are lifted at the same time.
If Night Shift or True Tone resets the display, Glow restores your level within two seconds.
Glow re-attaches to your displays after sleep, at the level you left it on.
A single universal app. No kernel extensions, no background helpers, nothing left running.
Compatibility
Glow uses the extended dynamic range headroom of Apple's XDR panels, so it needs an EDR display to do its work — built in or connected.
FAQ
No. Glow scales the display's gamma table linearly and leaves tone mapping alone. There is no colour shift and no white layer drawn over the screen — the whole panel simply gets evenly brighter.
Glow notices the display being reset and restores your level within two seconds. After sleep it re-attaches to your displays on its own.
Yes, as long as the display is EDR-capable. Glow lifts every connected EDR display at the same time, including a Pro Display XDR next to the built-in panel.
Under 2 MB. It is one universal app with no kernel extensions and no background helpers. Quit it and your display returns to normal.
Glow is developed by Arash André Pourasgari and published by PGari Inc.
One small app, one sun in the menu bar, and the brightness your display has been holding back.
Download for MacVersion 1.0.0 · macOS 13 or later · Universal · Under 2 MB