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I am running Qubes OS based on Fedora 36, and using i3wm. I am working on creating an i3 block similar to this contributed blocklet, but without using xbacklight.

Why not xbacklight? My laptop has brightness increase and decrease fn keys (i.e., XF86MonBrightnessUp and XF86MonBrightnessDown) which work! I do not have xbacklight installed, and I do not want to install additional packages, because clearly my brightness controls work.

  1. What I want to do is determine what command my XF86MonBrightnessUp and XF86MonBrightnessDown keys are sending (such that I could run it from terminal)? Using that, I will update my i3blocks script.

I've tried using xev, but it does not seem to give me very useful info.

  1. Would also be great if there is a way to determine current brightness level (again, without additional packages).

Ideally, I want to control the brightness in a way that is most battery efficient, and I assume that's what XF86MonBrightnessUp and XF86MonBrightnessDown do already by default, and while not necessarily so with other packages.

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  • In which desktop environment can you control the brightness with the Fn key? If it is i3, the appropriate media keys must have already been bound in your configuration, ~/.config/i3/config. You can check and see what command it executes. Commented Oct 8, 2023 at 11:00
  • @C.Aknesil - I am not using a desktop environment, I am using i3. And I have NOT bound these media keys in my ~/.config/i3/config file. This is essentially exactly why I am asking - I want to know what these keys are already bound to (and it is NOT currently done via my i3 config), so I can update my i3 config to match Commented Oct 8, 2023 at 14:12
  • It's wierd that XF86MonBrightnessUp and XF86MonBrightnessDown work in i3 without you binding them in ~/.config/i3/config. As far as I know, it's the desktop environment (or i3 window manager in your case) that defines the functionality of the media keys. Also, I am not sure if Xorg is capable of "consuming" the keyboard inputs rather than mapping them according to a layout and passing them above to the desktop/window manager, which either "consumes" them or also passes them above to the application controlling the focussed window. Commented Oct 8, 2023 at 17:59

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