Lunar is the most ambitious brightness app on the Mac, and if adaptive brightness is a hobby for you rather than a chore, it may simply be the right answer. The two apps disagree about one deep thing, though, and it’s worth understanding before you pick.
What Lunar does well
Range. Lunar’s Sync Mode drives your external monitors from the MacBook’s ambient light sensor through a perceived-luminosity algorithm. No sensor in your Mac? It can follow sunrise and sunset for your location, or a clock schedule, or even an external light sensor. It covers a sensorless Mac mini or Studio more thoroughly than anything else here. All of these adaptive modes are part of Lunar Pro.
Sub-zero dimming, darker than the panel’s own minimum, is free. XDR brightness boost, its headline paid feature, pushes MacBook Pro and Pro Display panels past their standard brightness; I don’t offer that at all. And it publishes a short, plain crash-reporting policy: crash reports only, used only to fix bugs, deleted weekly. They may carry device info and an IP address, plus an email if a buyer opted in, and the policy says so. That kind of published restraint deserves to be copied.
The $23 lifetime license is fair, and it comes with a 14-day trial of everything. After that, the free version keeps manual control and sub-zero dimming, capped at 100 adjustments a day, but none of the adaptive modes.
Where this app differs
Lunar’s adaptive curve is a formula. A good formula, tuned by someone who has thought hard about perceived luminosity. But a formula, with curve-factor knobs you adjust when its idea of matched doesn’t agree with your eyes.
My calibrated mode has no formula to argue with. You set every screen by eye in dim light, then again in bright light, and each display gets a line between the two. The app’s job from then on is purely secretarial: hold the set to the levels you chose, at every point in between. Your eye, in your chair, against your wall glare, is the instrument, not an average observer’s response curve. The reasoning gets a full essay in Matched, not equal.
The other difference is temperament. Lunar is a big app that rewards exploration; mine is deliberately one knob, with the depth hidden behind a gear. Neither is wrong. They’re for different people.
Choose accordingly
- Choose Lunar for XDR boost, for adaptive brightness on a Mac with no ambient sensor, for external light sensors, or if you enjoy tuning a big system to your taste.
- Choose Brightness Controller if what you want is screens that look like each other, set by your own eye, from one slider, for free, and a log that can tell you afterwards why anything changed.
At a glance
| Lunar | Brightness Controller | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $23 lifetime, 14-day trial; free tier is manual only, 100 adjustments/day | Free |
| Adaptive model | Algorithmic, in Pro: sensor, location, clock or external sensor | Ambient sensor moving per-display lines you calibrated by eye |
| Matching | Perceived-luminosity formula with tunable curve factors | Two points per display, set by you; no formula |
| XDR boost | Yes, its headline paid feature | No |
| Sub-zero dimming | Yes, free | Yes, in Calibrated mode, with a PWM-aware backlight floor |
| Sensorless Macs (mini/Studio) | Covered via location and clock modes, in Pro | Manual master only, a gap I haven't closed |
| Explains itself | No | Plain-text log of every change and its cause |
Facts checked September 2026; Lunar ships constantly, so check lunar.fyi for current details.