Surface Book Tip: Adjust the Screen Brightness with the Keyboard

I recently lamented the fact that Microsoft doesn’t include dedicated screen brightness keys on Surface Book’s keyboard. But as it turns out, Surface Book does support this functionality via secret keyboard shortcuts.

Be sure to read Surface Book Tip: Master the Keyboard for a complete rundown of the special keys you can use with Surface Book’s keyboard. Since I wrote that article. Microsoft has released its Surface Book User Guide, which includes a useful little nugget I was unaware of: You can in fact control screen brightness with the keyboard. You just need to know the secret keyboard shortcuts.

They are:

Screen brightness up: Fn + DEL
Screen brightness down: Fn + BACKSPACE

This is a vastly preferable way to adjust screen brightness. If you use the Screen Brightness quick action tile in Action Center, for example, you can only bump the brightness up in 25 percent increments. But these two keyboard shortcuts change the brightness in much nicer 10 percent increments.

Very nice.